Quick Note — Recommend a Solution for Migrating Workloads to IaaS and PaaS
AZ-305 › Unit 4: Design infrastructure solutions › Design migrations › Recommend a solution for migrating workloads to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS)
Quick Note — Recommend a Solution for Migrating Workloads to IaaS and PaaS
A bank's migration team has just finished assessing 400 workloads. The CTO walks in and asks one question: "Which of these should we lift-and-shift, and which should we modernise?" The architect's answer determines whether the migration finishes in 12 months or stretches to 30. Choose lift-and-shift for everything, and the cloud bill stays high while operational toil persists. Modernise everything, and the migration never finishes. The right answer is a workload-by-workload decision using the migration strategy ladder: rehost, replatform, refactor, rearchitect, rebuild, retire, retain.…
Retrieval target
- Recommend a Solution for Migrating Workloads to IaaS and PaaS
- Closed-book recall
- 5 minutes
- Open the full lesson after a miss
Decision anchors
| Prompt | Compact answer |
|---|---|
Azure Migrate Server Migration | The replication + cutover tool inside the Azure Migrate Hub. Supports VMware (agentless), Hyper-V (agentless), and physical / other-cloud (agent-based) sources. Replicates each server's disks to Azure Managed Disks continuously; cutover stops the source, finalises the replica, and starts the target VM. Same engine as Azure Site Recovery under the hood. |
| Agentless vs agent-based server replication | Agentless (VMware / Hyper-V) — replication driver runs on the hypervisor, reads VM disks externally; no per-VM agent install. Quick to set up at scale. Limited to supported VMware ESXi / Hyper-V versions. Agent-based — install the Mobility Service agent inside each VM (or physical server). Required for physical hosts, AWS / GCP migration, and unsupported hypervisor versions.… |
App Service Migration Assistant | A free downloadable Windows tool that assesses an on-prem IIS site and migrates it to App Service. Inspects the IIS app pool, .NET version, dependencies, and config; flags incompatibilities (custom HTTP modules, registry usage); imports the site to a target App Service Plan in minutes with sync of code + settings + bindings. The fastest path to refactor IIS → App Service. |
| Test failover in Server Migration | A non-disruptive validation before cutover. Spins up the replicated VM into an isolated VNet with a different IP; you log in, smoke-test the app, then clean up — source stays running, replication continues. Essential before any large cutover wave to validate boot, drivers, app behaviour, network config, without committing to the production cutover. |
Read the answers once, then cover the right-hand column and reconstruct each one from the prompt. A useful answer names the requirement, the recommended control or service boundary, and the nearest alternative it rejects. If you can only recognize the answer after seeing it, retrieval is not yet secure.
Ninety-second explanation
Without notes, explain:
- What requirement signals this learning objective rather than a neighbouring one?
- Which two solution families are most likely to be compared?
- Which hard constraint eliminates the strongest distractor?
- What identity, network, data, or failure boundary must appear in the design?
- Which operational test would prove the recommendation works?
Then compare your explanation with the full lesson. Record the missing decision rule—not merely the missed product name—in your error log.
When to open the full lesson
Open the curriculum-linked lesson when you cannot explain a comparison, when a scenario depends on a numeric limit or SKU feature, or when the service is on a retirement path. Use current Microsoft Learn documentation for availability, limits, pricing, naming, and migration milestones; the quick note is intentionally compact.
Source and freshness
Derived from the linked AZ-305 lesson and retrieval deck, grounded in both attached course sources. Reviewed 2026-08-02. Current Microsoft documentation controls changing product contracts.