VMware migration to Azure in 10 Weeks

The Situation

A legal consulting firm serving clients across North America had built a reliable, well-managed VMware environment over the years: 242 virtual machines running on vSphere 7.x with a vSAN storage cluster, supporting everything from SQL Server and SharePoint to a legal case management system handling sensitive client records.

Broadcom's renewal quote came in at a 2.8× increase over what the firm had been paying. The Essentials Plus SKU it had relied on was discontinued. The CFO set a 120-day window to evaluate alternatives and bring a recommendation to the board.

The firm needed a structured way to assess the options, understand the real cost comparison, and execute a migration without disrupting the business — and a partner with the migration skills to make that happen.

Finding the right destination

DartIQ Glide ran a full workload discovery and destination analysis across the 242-VM estate. The discovery surfaced something important: 61% of the VMs — 148 machines — ran Windows Server, already licensed on-premises under active Software Assurance.

That finding changed the cloud destination conversation. Azure Hybrid Benefit allows existing Windows Server licences to be brought into Azure, eliminating the cost of purchasing new OS licences in the cloud.

Azure's compute pricing runs approximately 7% higher than AWS. But the savings from Azure Hybrid Benefit, sustained over three years, more than offset that gap — making Azure the lower-cost destination on a three-year TCO basis, despite the higher sticker price. The recommendation followed the data.

There was a second factor. The CFO's initial instinct was that cloud would cost more than renewing VMware. That instinct came from comparing Azure compute against the VMware subscription renewal line — a reasonable starting point, but an incomplete one. The full on-premises run cost — including server hardware amortization, storage, power and cooling, datacenter floor space, and maintenance contracts — totaled over $1.2M per year. Against that figure, Azure represented a 47% reduction, not a cost increase.

The migration

DartIQ Glide executed the migration in three waves over 10 weeks.

Wave 1 — Landing zone and validation

Moved dev and test workloads to Azure, establishing the landing zone and validating the network design, storage tier mapping, and SQL Server replication approach before any production system was touched.

Wave 2 — Production non-critical workloads

Moved production non-critical workloads — including SharePoint, lifted to Azure VMs to preserve the firm's customizations, and the .NET line-of-business applications. vSAN storage performance profiles were translated to Azure Premium SSD tiers based on baseline data captured during discovery.

Wave 3 — Highest-risk workloads

Handled the highest-risk workloads: the SQL Server Availability Group and the legal case management database. The migration was sequenced carefully — replica lag was monitored and confirmed stable before the cutover window opened. The legal software vendor validated the Azure environment in advance. The cutover ran over a Saturday evening maintenance window without incident.

Fourteen VMs identified as inactive were decommissioned rather than migrated, recovering storage and removing unnecessary license overhead.

The outcome

Ten weeks. Three waves. Zero unplanned downtime.

The firm's annual infrastructure cost fell by 47%. The four-person IT team was retained in full, with two staff members completing Azure certifications.