Customize an assessment
This article describes how to customize assessments created by Azure Migrate Discovery and assessment tool.
Azure Migrate provides a central hub to track discovery, assessment, and migration of your on-premises apps and workloads, and private/public cloud VMs, to Azure. The hub provides Azure Migrate tools for assessment and migration, as well as third-party independent software vendor (ISV) offerings.
You can use the Azure Migrate Discovery and assessment tool to create assessments for on-premises VMware VMs and Hyper-V VMs, in preparation for migration to Azure. The Discovery and assessment tool assesses on-premises servers for migration to Azure IaaS virtual machines and Azure VMware Solution.
About assessments
Assessments that you create with the Discovery and assessment tool are a point-in-time snapshot of data. There are two types of assessments that you can create using Azure Migrate: Discovery and assessment.
| Assessment Type | Details |
|---|---|
| Azure VM | Assessments to migrate your on-premises servers to Azure virtual machines. You can assess your on-premises VMware VMs, Hyper-V VMs, and physical servers for migration to Azure using this assessment type.Learn more. |
Sizing criteria options in Azure Migrate assessments:
| Sizing criteria | Details | Data |
|---|---|---|
| Performance-based | Assessments that make recommendations based on collected performance data. | Azure VM assessment: VM size recommendation is based on CPU and memory utilization data. Disk type recommendation (standard HDD/SSD or premium-managed disks) is based on the IOPS and throughput of the on-premises disks. Azure SQL assessment: The Azure SQL configuration is based on performance data of SQL instances and databases, which includes: CPU utilization, Memory utilization, IOPS (Data and Log files), throughput and latency of IO operations |
| As-is on-premises | Assessments that don't use performance data to make recommendations. | Azure VM assessment: VM size recommendation is based on the on-premises VM size The recommended disk type is based on what you select in the storage type setting for the assessment. |
How is an assessment done?
An assessment done in Azure Migrate Discovery and assessment has three stages. Assessment starts with a suitability analysis, followed by sizing, and lastly, a monthly cost estimation. A machine only moves along to a later stage if it passes the previous one. For example, if a machine fails the Azure suitability check, it's marked as unsuitable for Azure, and sizing and costing won't be done. Learn more.
What's in an Azure VM assessment?
| Property | Details |
|---|---|
| Target location | The Azure location to which you want to migrate. Azure VM assessment currently supports these target regions: Australia East, Australia Southeast, China North, Canada Central, Canada East, China East 2, China North, China East, China North, China East, China East, China East 2, Germany Central, Germany Northeast, China East, China East, Korea Central, Korea South, China North, China North, China East, China East, South India, UK South, China East 2, US Gov Arizona, US Gov Texas, US Gov Virginia, China North, China North, West India, China North, and China North 2. |
| Storage type | You can use this property to specify the type of disks you want to move to, in Azure. For as-on-premises sizing, you can specify the target storage type either as Premium-managed disks, Standard SSD-managed disks or Standard HDD-managed disks. For performance-based sizing, you can specify the target disk type either as Automatic, Premium-managed disks, Standard HDD-managed disks, or Standard SSD-managed disks. When you specify the storage type as automatic, the disk recommendation is done based on the performance data of the disks (IOPS and throughput). If you specify the storage type as premium/standard, the assessment will recommend a disk SKU within the storage type selected. If you want to achieve a single instance VM SLA of 99.9%, you may want to specify the storage type as Premium-managed disks. This ensures that all disks in the assessment are recommended as Premium-managed disks. Azure |
| Reserved Instances (RI) | This property helps you specify if you have Reserved Instances in Azure, cost estimations in the assessment are then done taking into RI discounts. Reserved instances are currently only supported for Standard Pay-in-Advance Offer offer in Azure Migrate. |
| Sizing criterion | The criterion to be used to right-size VMs for Azure. You can either do performance-based sizing or size the VMs as on-premises, without considering the performance history. |
| Performance history | The duration to consider for evaluating the performance data of machines. This property is only applicable when sizing criterion is performance-based. |
| Percentile utilization | The percentile value of the performance sample set to be considered for right-sizing. This property is only applicable when sizing is performance-based. |
| VM series | You can specify the VM series that you would like to consider for right-sizing. For example, if you have a production environment that you do not plan to migrate to A-series VMs in Azure, you can exclude A-series from the list or series and the right-sizing is done only in the selected series. |
| Comfort factor | Azure VM assessment considers a buffer (comfort factor) during assessment. This buffer is applied on top of machine utilization data for VMs (CPU, memory, disk, and network). The comfort factor accounts for issues such as seasonal usage, short performance history, and likely increases in future usage. For example, a 10-core VM with 20% utilization normally results in a 2-core VM. However, with a comfort factor of 2.0x, the result is a 4-core VM instead. |
| Offer | The Azure offer you're enrolled to. Azure Migrate estimates the cost accordingly. |
| Currency | Billing currency. |
| Discount (%) | Any subscription-specific discount you receive on top of the Azure offer. The default setting is 0%. |
| VM uptime | If your VMs are not going to be running 24x7 in Azure, you can specify the duration (number of days per month and number of hours per day) for which they would be running and the cost estimations would be done accordingly. The default value is 31 days per month and 24 hours per day. |
| Azure Hybrid Benefit | Specify whether you have software assurance and are eligible for Azure Hybrid Benefit. If the setting is enabled, Azure prices for selected operating systems are not considered for VM costing. |
Edit assessment properties
To edit assessment properties after creating an assessment, do the following:
- In the Azure Migrate project, select Windows, Linux and SQL Server.
- In Azure Migrate: Discovery and assessment, select the assessments count.
- In Assessment, select the relevant assessment > Edit properties.
- Customize the assessment properties in accordance with the tables above.
- Select Save to update the assessment.
You can also edit the assessment properties when you're creating an assessment.
Next steps
- Learn more about how Azure VM assessments are calculated.