Azure Migrate

About Azure Migrate

Azure Migrate is Microsoft's migration planning and execution service for organizations moving servers, databases, web apps, virtual desktops, and other workloads to Azure. It brings discovery, assessment, business-case planning, dependency analysis, wave planning, and migration coordination into one Azure project. The service is most useful before and during a cloud migration, when teams need evidence about what they run today, how systems depend on one another, what Azure targets fit, and which workloads should migrate, modernize, retain, or retire.

What does Azure Migrate help organizations do?

Azure Migrate organizes work across discovery, assessment, planning, modernization, and execution. Teams can inventory servers and supported workloads, review configuration and performance information, group related systems, create assessments, estimate Azure resource costs, build business cases, and track migration progress.

The service covers more than virtual machine moves. Microsoft documents supported scenarios for servers, databases, web apps, virtual desktops, offline transfer with Azure Data Box, and modernization planning. This makes Azure Migrate useful when an organization needs one evidence base for a portfolio rather than separate spreadsheets for infrastructure, applications, costs, and migration status.

How does discovery work?

Microsoft recommends the Azure Migrate appliance for detailed continuous discovery when the source environment can connect to Azure. The appliance collects configuration and performance metadata and can discover software inventory, SQL Server, supported web applications, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB information in supported scenarios. Configuration collection frequencies vary by source, while appliance services update automatically.

For restricted or disconnected environments, Azure Migrate also supports collector-based and import-based discovery. These methods can be useful when continuous appliance connectivity is not possible, but they may provide less current or less detailed information than appliance-based discovery.

What changed in Azure Migrate in 2026?

Microsoft added several planning capabilities during 2026. In August 2026, Azure Migrate introduced public preview network discovery for VMware and VMware environments using NSX. It can collect inventory such as subnets, VLANs, NSX segments, VMware port groups, load balancers, firewall policies, and NAT policies. The dependency map can also display network-aware relationships and workload communication paths.

In June 2026, Microsoft added a public preview integration with GitHub Copilot modernization CLI for portfolio-scale code insights. Teams can assess multiple applications, evaluate Azure compatibility, review code-fix recommendations, and compare refactor and replatform choices. In May 2026, Azure Migrate added automatic application discovery in public preview by grouping discovered workloads into logical applications.

How do business cases, reports, and wave planning help?

Azure Migrate can turn discovered inventory and assessments into planning outputs for technical and business stakeholders. Microsoft's Reports experience, currently public preview, can produce executive migration and modernization summaries, security insights, readiness information, target recommendations, TCO and ROI comparisons, and cost optimization guidance.

Wave Planning, also currently public preview, lets teams group workloads and applications into migration waves, sequence work by business criticality and complexity, visualize timelines, and track execution. This is useful for large estates where moving everything at once would create unacceptable operational risk.

What do Azure Migrate assessments show?

Assessments help determine whether discovered workloads are ready for Azure and what target configuration may fit them. Azure Migrate can create as-is assessments based on current configuration or performance-based assessments that use collected utilization data to recommend rightsized targets.

Assessment results can include readiness, recommended Azure targets, estimated Azure resource cost, and migration guidance. Results are point-in-time planning outputs, so buyers should not treat them as permanent sizing decisions. Performance history, seasonal peaks, licensing, resilience, and growth expectations should be considered before approving a production target.

How does dependency analysis work now?

Microsoft recommends agentless dependency analysis. It is generally available for VMware VMs, Hyper-V VMs, physical servers, and servers running in other public clouds such as AWS and GCP. It captures TCP connection data without installing agents on the source servers and helps teams identify systems that should migrate together.

Agent-based dependency analysis is now a legacy path. Microsoft states that it is supported only in the classic view, is not available in the new experience, and cannot be enabled for new servers. The classic view is scheduled for deprecation by the end of 2026. Teams starting new migration programs should design around agentless dependency analysis rather than building new workflows around the older Log Analytics and Service Map approach.

What scale limits matter for large migrations?

Microsoft documents up to 35,000 servers discovered and assessed in a single Azure Migrate project for major server scenarios. A VMware appliance can discover up to 10,000 VMware VMs, with support for up to 10 vCenter Servers per appliance. A Hyper-V appliance can discover up to 5,000 Hyper-V VMs, while a physical-server appliance can discover up to 1,000 physical servers.

For VMware agentless migration, Microsoft documents concurrent replication of up to 500 VMs discovered by one appliance when scale-out appliances are used. The portal allows machines to be selected for replication in batches of up to 10. These limits make appliance placement and migration-wave design important in large estates.

How does Azure Migrate pricing work?

Pricing was checked against Microsoft's Azure Migrate pricing page on September 6, 2026. Microsoft lists Azure Migrate and its core assessment tools at no additional charge, although third-party ISV tools can have separate licensing costs.

Azure Migrate server migration is free for the first 180 days for each replicated machine. After 180 days, Microsoft currently lists a $25 monthly charge per replicated instance. Even during the free licensing period, Azure Storage, storage transactions, and data transfer used for replication can create charges. Related destination services such as Azure VMs, databases, networking, backup, monitoring, and security are billed separately.

What should buyers know about the Azure Migrate appliance?

The appliance is a virtual machine deployed in the source environment for discovery and assessment. Microsoft's current appliance guidance calls for Windows Server 2022 or Windows Server 2025, 8 vCPUs, 32 GB RAM, and about 80 GB of disk storage for supported deployments. The onboarding script blocks Windows Server 2016 or earlier for this purpose.

The appliance requires internet connectivity directly or through a proxy, and FIPS mode is not supported for appliance deployment. Teams should review source permissions, proxy rules, firewall requirements, credentials, and data-residency implications before installation because discovered metadata is sent to the Azure Migrate project.

How is Azure Migrate different from Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup?

Azure Migrate is the planning and migration hub. It discovers workloads, assesses readiness, builds business cases, identifies dependencies, organizes migration waves, and coordinates supported migration execution. Azure Site Recovery is primarily a disaster recovery service for replication, failover, and failback. Azure Backup is a protection and restore service for retained recovery points.

There can be technical overlap in replication concepts, but the buyer intent is different. Use Azure Migrate for a planned relocation or modernization program, Site Recovery when the main requirement is business continuity, and Azure Backup when the requirement is data protection and restore rather than workload relocation.

What are the main limitations and migration risks?

Azure Migrate does not remove the need for application testing, dependency validation, landing-zone design, network planning, security review, identity architecture, licensing review, or operational readiness. A technically successful migration can still fail if DNS, firewall rules, latency, unsupported operating systems, external dependencies, or data flows are missed.

Several 2026 capabilities are still preview, including network discovery, Reports, Wave Planning, Azure Copilot migration agent, automatic application discovery, and GitHub Copilot modernization integration. Preview features should be evaluated in nonproduction before they become critical controls in a production migration program.

Who should choose something else?

Organizations that only need ongoing disaster recovery should evaluate Azure Site Recovery instead of building a migration program around Azure Migrate. Teams that only need backup and restore should use Azure Backup. Small workloads that can be rebuilt directly on a managed Azure service may not need a large discovery project.

Azure Migrate is also not a substitute for application architecture. If the real goal is to redesign applications around containers, serverless, managed databases, or event-driven services, Azure Migrate can supply inventory, dependency, readiness, cost, and code insight, but architects still need to choose the target design and validate it. Buyers should use Azure Migrate when a structured portfolio view and coordinated migration process meaningfully reduce risk.