There is very little difference between migrating Microsoft Dynamics from an on-premise environment to Azure. One of the great things about Azure is it uses existing tools IT workers are familiar with.

The process for creating a new environment in Azure is similar to that of creating a virtual environment on-premise and in some cases easier due to the simplified wizards provided in Azure to create virtual machines and networks.

For example, once signed up for an account, creation of the first virtual machine will also create the virtual network and once the machine and network have been provisioned, login to the new machine will be available. Any additional machines can easily be added to the network created while provisioning the first machine during the new machine creation process.

Once the machine(s) has(have) been created, there are additional decisions to make such as end user access methods (Remote Desktop, VPNs, etc.), but once the environment is up-and-running, installation of Dynamics is the same as it is in an on-premise environment.

Having built numerous environments for Azure, there are some important tips Queue Associates recommends to making implementation in Azure easier.

Tips:

• Install Anti-malware – Microsoft provides this option free-of-charge – and it can be a literal system life saver (more later)

• Enable Virtual Machine Backups – there is an additional charge for storage that is minimal – but as with Antimalware, it is another literal system life saver (more later)

• Do not use Windows licensing provided with Azure unless necessary – bringing one’s own Windows licensing will save 40-percent or more on monthly licensing costs in Azure

• Lock down network endpoints to prevent attacks
• Do not use accounts with the name “admin” in them as these are more susceptible to brute force attacks
• Use Azure monitoring to detect/prevent malware attacks
• Leverage Azure Active Directory Services for securing the cloud domain including MFA (multi-factor authentication) and Conditional Access (i.e., allowing access only from specific locations, such as on-premise network)

The “more later” part: Queue Associates has recently helped several clients with disaster recovery (DR). DR used to mainly be a matter of recovering from power or hardware failure, but more-and-more malware and ransomware have been the culprits.

Up-to-date Anti-malware software in many cases will detect and prevent such attacks.

Having routine backups (in virtual machine terms) snapshots will enable rollbacks to times prior to malware/ransomware attacks. One of the nice things about Azure, is you can easily test these backups by restoring snapshots as an alternate VMs – testing backups, as it has always been, is crucial to a recovery solution.

Contact Queue Associates

Please contact Queue Associates (a Microsoft Dynamics Gold Partner) to learn more about our services surrounding Microsoft Dynamics, both on-prem and the new cloud-based Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite, including migration and transformation solutions. You can reach us by completing the form on our CONTACT page, or by calling us at the Queue office phone number for your local region (U.S. and Global locations).