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Microsoft Azure Assessments

For Azure Assessments, we can offer a thorough analysis in 3 key areas:

  1. Cloud Readiness: Not all machines are suitable to run in Azure. Our Azure Server Assessment will assess all on-premises machines and assigns them a readiness category score. Each machine will fall into one of three categories.
    1. Ready for Azure: The machine can be migrated as-is to Azure without any changes. It will start in Azure with full Azure & Candor support.
    2. Conditionally ready for Azure: The machine might start in Azure but might not have full Azure support. For example, Azure doesn’t support a machine that’s running an old version of Windows Server. To fix any readiness problems, follow the remediation guidance the assessment suggests.
    3. Not ready for Azure: The machine won’t start in Azure. For example, if an on-premises machine’s disk stores more than 64TB, Azure can’t host the machine. Follow the remediation guidance to fix the problem before migration.
  2. Cloud performance: Each performance-based assessment in Azure Migrate is associated with a confidence rating. The rating ranges from one (lowest) to five (highest) stars. The confidence rating helps you estimate the reliability of the size recommendations Azure Migrate provides. The confidence rating is assigned to an assessment. The rating is based on the availability of data points that are needed to compute the assessment. For performance-based sizing, Server Assessment needs:
    1. The utilization data for CPU and VM RAM.
    2. The disk IOPS and throughput data for every disk attached to the VM.
    3. The network I/O to handle performance-based sizing for each network adapter attached to a VM.
    4. If any of these utilization numbers aren’t available, the size recommendations might be unreliable.
  3. Cloud optimization: This has been our most common cloud assessment request for 2020 and for obvious reasons…most public cloud instances are misconfigured. This is not only costly to the business, but it also presents a huge security risk. As part of the assessment, we can monitor and analyze your Azure bill with Azure Cost Management tools. This will help you set budgets and allocate spending to your teams and projects. Going forward, you’ll be able to implement cost controls and guardrails for your environment.
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Considering Moving to Azure

Aligning your strategy to your end goal from the start will help keep the migration process on track, and Microsoft Azure has various tools to assist in this assessment phase. The Azure Virtual Machine Readiness Assessment will automatically inspect your on premise environment, whether it is physical or virtualized, and provide you with a check list and detailed report on steps you need to take to move your environment to the cloud.

Ultimately, the migration process to Azure or any Cloud for that matter is best handled by experts. As an experienced cloud services partner we can help you prioritize certain workloads and perform a structured risk assessment. Additionally, we can provide you with security and governance, application support, cost management and performance monitoring, backed by a service level agreement (SLA).

Azure Total Cost of Ownership Calculator

Backup & DR with Azure

Let’s be honest, back-ups and disaster recovery is no one’s favorite topic. However, they are necessary and it’s important they’re done with a plan.

With Microsoft Azure, you can achieve low recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) targets for every major system in your organization, simply and cost-effectively. Eliminate the hassle and cost of secondary datacenters and tap into nearly infinite capacity at a moment’s notice with a cloud-based data recovery solution designed for the needs of enterprises.

We recommend Veeam® Cloud Connect for the Enterprise. VCC-E is an easy, efficient way to get backups offsite to Azure. Microsoft Azure Marketplace, customers can instantly provision cloud backup repositories and automatically move on premises backup archives to Azure. This powerful combination of Microsoft and Veeam provides enterprise customers with cost-effective Azure storage plus the granular recovery capabilities of Veeam.

Also if disaster hits, the last thing you want is to run into a problem. With Azure, you can test your business continuity plans, or run dev-test copies of production workloads in Azure whenever you need to, and without impacting users. Plus, test new versions of applications with copies of live data, and then seamlessly put the new version into production in your datacenter.

Azure Backup Best Practice Guide

Ready to Explore Windows Virtual Desktop

I’m sure if we were to take a poll, the virtual desktop or remote worker would be the number one prevailing technology of 2020. Furthermore, if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s how important having an agile workforce is…enter Windows Virtual Desktop.

Windows Virtual Desktop stands alone because it’s the only virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) that delivers simplified management, multi-session Windows 10 and optimizations for Microsoft 365 applications. Also because it’s built on Azure, it also includes built-in security and compliance.

Disclaimer however, Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) profiles can be tricky to get right the first time. So make sure your working with an engineer or partner who has design and implementation experience. Storage performance is key to success here! Just let us know if we can help you determine the right WVD design with a free assessment?

Virtual Sizing Guidelines

O365 Migration & Optimization Services

Office 365 can be one of the most productive tools your company will use, but it isn’t always as simple as people make it out to be. Whether you’re just starting to implement Office 365, or your installation hasn’t been going as planned, there are a few best practices that can make all the difference in your migration success.

This year has also been the year of optimization. More than ever, we’re demanding the most out of our software applications. As you know, there are many paths to migrate data from an on-premises email organization to Microsoft 365 or Office 365.

With a skilled cloud solution provider (CSP), migrating to Office 365 does not require a complete overhaul of IT but an optimization of existing infrastructure.