Hello everyone and welcome back. Now that we've talked about the assessment and migration processes for VMware machines and Hyper-V machines, let's talk a little bit about what all's involved when assessing and migrating physical machines using Azure migrate.

To prepare for assessment of physical machines, you need to prepare Azure and then you need to prepare the physical servers.

When you prepare Azure, what you are essentially doing is setting up the permissions that your Azure account and resources require in order to work with Azure migrate. You need to ensure that you have permission to create an Azure Migrate project and to register the Azure Migrate appliance that will be created and used for the assessment and migration.

Once you've got Azure prepared for Azure Migrate, it's time to prepare the physical servers for assessment. What you'll need to do is verify the physical serving settings and the settings for appliance deployment.

For physical Windows machines that you plan to discover and migrate, you'll need to set up a local user account on them. The user account that you create needs to belong to the local remote desktop users group, the local performance monitor users group, and the local performance log users group.

For Linux machines that you plan to discover and migrate, you'll need a Root account.

I should note that all Windows and Linux operating systems are supported except for Windows Server 2003 and SUSE Linux.

As far as ports are concerned, you'll need to ensure that inbound connections to the Azure Migrate appliance are allowed on TCP port 3389. This is necessary to allow RDP to the appliance. You'll also need to allow inbound connections on port 44368 so you can remotely access the appliance management at your route. Outbound connections from the appliance on ports 443, 5671, and 5672, are also necessary so the appliance can send discovery and performance metadata back to Azure Migrate.

You'll also need to open several ports to and from your physical servers as well. You'll need to allow inbound connections to Windows servers from ports 443 and 5989, so that configuration and performance metadata can be pulled from them. For Linux servers, you'll need to allow inbound connections on UDP port 22 so that configuration and performance metadata can be pulled from them.

Before you begin an assessment, you'll need to prepare for appliance deployment. You'll need to verify any appliance requirements and you'll need to review the list of Azure URLs that the appliance will need access to. You can see the complete up to date list of the Azure URLs at the address you see on your screen.

It's also a good idea to review the data that the appliance is going to collect during the discovery and assessment of your machines. Lastly, make a note of the port access requirements for the appliance. Generally speaking, you'll need to open inbound connections to the appliance on TCP port 3389 to allow RDP to it. Inbound connections on port 44368 are also necessary so you can remotely access the appliance management at URL. Outbound connections on port 443, 5671, and 5672, will also be necessary in order to send discovery and performance metadata of to Azure.

To pull configuration and performance metadata from physical Windows servers, you'll need to open inbound connections on ports 443 and 5989. For Linux machines, you'll need to open inbound connections on UDP port 22 to pull configuration and performance metadata.

It's important to note that you can deploy the Azure Migrate appliance on either a physical server or on a virtual machine. Whichever one you deploy to, the OS must be 2012 R2 or later. Hardware requirements for the appliance dictate that the machine you deploy to must have at least 16 gig of RAM available along with eight virtual CPUs. The Azure Migrate appliance must also have around 80 gig of free storage space available and the external switch for the appliance VM if you're using a virtual machine.

Lastly, the appliance will need a static or dynamic IP address along with internet access.

When preparing for an assessment and migration, be aware an appliance can be associated with a single project. It's also true that any number of appliances can also be associated with a single project.

It's also important to remember that you can assess up to a max of 35,000 machines in a single project. When it comes time for discovery, be aware that a single appliance can only discover up to 250 servers.

Any assessment group that you create will only hold up to 35,000 machines, and a single assessment can only assess up to 35,000 machines. If you need to assess more than this, you'll have to create multiple assessments.

To discover on-prem servers, Azure Migrate needs permissions to those servers. That being the case, on each of the Windows servers that you plan to discover, you'll need to set up a local user account. This account needs to belong to the Remote Management Users group on the local machine, the Performance Monitor Users group on the local machine, and the Performance Log Users group on the local machine. For each Linux machine you discover, you'll need a root account.

Once you've discovered your physical machines, you can begin the assessment. There are actually two different types of assessments that you can perform. You can perform a Performance-based assessment or you can perform an As On-premises assessment.

The Performance-based assessment is an assessment that's based on collected performance data. If you opt to perform this type of assessment, Azure Migrate will make VM size requirements that are based on CPU and memory utilization data. Azure Migrate will also recommend disk type based on the IOPS and throughput of your on-prem disk.

As on-premises assessments are based on on-prem server sizes. Azure Migrate will make VM sizing recommendations based on the on-prem server sizes. Its disk type of recommendation will be based on the storage type setting that you choose for the assessment.

Once you have all physical servers assessed, you can begin the migration of them. To get started, you'll need to set up your replication appliance and then install the Mobility service on the machine you plan to migrate.

Next, you'll want to enable replication and let that replication complete.

Once you've confirmed replication has completed, run a test migration to ensure everything's working as expected. If you're happy with the test migration results, run a full migration to Azure.

For detailed preparation steps for migrating physical servers using Azure Migrate, visit the URL that you see on your screen.