As we step into the new year, it’s a good time to reflect on two things.
First, some professional gratitude for my role, team, co-workers, and leaders at Premier Trailer Leasing. Best IT team in the trailer leasing industry, and really great people to work alongside.
Second, I’m going to focus on a digital transformation journey that defined my 2023: Our enterprise-level Azure cloud migration.
Unsurprisingly, my focus was on our SQL Servers – but I had way more fun than I probably should have putting my old “sysadmin hat” back on, diving right into the wider Azure infrastructure (Azure VMs, network security groups and firewalls, Azure Virtual Desktops, backups, Azure Site Recovery, etc.).
Tuning for SQL Performance and Savings
A significant achievement of our migration was the cost savings and performance gains we engineered through tuning of Azure SQL Server VM configurations. Leveraging the capabilities of Azure and making strategic adjustments, we not only saved Premier Trailer Leasing thousands of dollars each month on its SQL Server overhead, but we were at the same time able to double our performance compared to our previous private-cloud, VM-Ware platform.
Unlocking New Azure SQL Server VM Possibilities
The cloud migration into Azure SQL Server VMs also opened doors to a new world of possibilities within Azure itself for our team. From re-imagining SQL Server backup strategies to harnessing the flexibility of various Azure offerings, every step was an opportunity to learn and make things better – using the agility, scalability, and efficiency that a public cloud like Azure brings to the table.
Coming Soon: Top Lessons Learned
In 2024, I’ll be sharing some lessons I learned regarding Azure SQL Server VM sizing, networking nuances, storage considerations, and more. My hope is to share what I’ve learned with other SQL Server data professionals – especially DBAs – planning a similar Azure cloud migration.
Although I last blogged consistently in 2017, I’ve committed to resurrecting it in 2024. Stay tuned!
–Scott