40+ Migration Steps.
Miss One. Lose Days.

The phase most teams rush — and pay for later. Everything from running DEA to identifying linked servers, CLR assemblies, and Agent jobs that need rework before you migrate a single byte.

• Database Experimentation Assistant (DEA) setup and baseline capture
• SSMS assessment wizard — feature parity gap analysis
• Linked servers, CLR assemblies, and MSDB jobs inventory
• Service tier selection (General Purpose vs. Business Critical)
• Sizing: storage, vCores, IOPS estimates for production workload

The most underestimated phase. VNet, subnet delegation, NSGs, and routing mistakes here will cause cryptic failures during migration execution — not during setup.

• VNet creation, subnet delegation (/27 minimum for MI)
• NSG rules: management ports, required outbound traffic
• VPN gateway or ExpressRoute — connectivity validation
• Route table configuration for MI subnet
• Managed Instance provisioning (allow 4–6 hours)

Three paths, each with different tradeoffs. The checklist walks through all three — with T-SQL code samples for backup/restore and log shipping that you can use directly.

• SSMS Migration Wizard — recommended for most workloads (2026 toolchain)
• Azure DMS v2 online migration — for minimal-downtime requirements
• Native backup/restore to Azure Blob Storage — T-SQL included
• Log shipping configuration for near-zero downtime
• Migration progress monitoring queries

The checklist most teams skip until something breaks in production. Every item here corresponds to a class of production incident — validate before you cut over.

• Row count verification across all migrated databases
• Login and user recreation (SQL Server vs. Azure AD auth)
• SQL Agent jobs re-creation and schedule validation
• Linked server re-configuration or removal planning
• Compatibility level upgrade, Query Store baseline, backup policy

The 2-hour window where everything either works or you roll back. The checklist covers every step in sequence — no guessing under pressure.

• Final transaction log backup and restore sequence
• DNS / connection string cutover procedure
• Application smoke test checklist (what to verify, in order)
• Azure Defender for SQL and alerting enablement
• Rollback criteria and decision points