During this course, the students will first explore the preparation steps that are required to help with a successful data modernization project, and the tools that can help support them in the various stages of such a project. They will then explore the different methods of migrating SQL workloads to a range of different SQL services that run in Azure.

The following is a summary of the lab objectives for each module:

The students will use the information gained in this module to demonstrate an understanding of data platform modernization, and why and how organizations should undertake a modernization project at a high level. They will learn how to determine the cost of moving to Azure. They will also gather information about the environment that they are working on. Students will finally determine a data platform modernization strategy to use for a given scenario.

The students will use the Data Migration Assistant in the prescribed data platform modernization stages to investigate their environment in an automated way. They will also identify any premigration compatibility issues and define a plan on how to address those issues before performing a migration of an on-premises server. Finally, they will assess how a workload will perform on a target version of Azure SQL Database.

The students will initially evaluate the migration process that they will use to migrate from an on-premises SQL Server 2008 R2 instance to an SQL Server 2017 running in a virtual machine. They will then perform a migration using Data Migration Assistant to move databases. Finally, they will assess a successful migration.

The students will perform a migration to Azure SQL Database. First, you will perform a schema migration and create the destination database as a pre-requisite, then you migrate from a database running in an on-premises SQL instance to Azure SQL Database. You will perform an online migration using Database Migration Service (DMS), to keep the data in synchronization between the source and the target databases until cut over to the new database.