Before I migrated even a single email to M365, I spent 6 years automating deployments throughout a 1,600+ server enterprise. This is why my perspective on migration scale differs from engineers who started with the cloud.

The environment was spread across multiple datacenters with Windows Servers ranging from 2003-2016. Deploying SCCM or SCEP agents on this scale without an automated framework was not a viable approach. PowerShell, batch scripting and other tools changed that. The solution automated deployments that manual methods could not. It also added a validation discipline to the process, which caught errors early.

The same mindset carried over into migration engineering. The same discipline can be used to automate repetitive tasks and build runbooks, which other engineers are able to execute without having the original architect in the room.

Windstream’s VMware vSphere experience added a new layer. Building virtual server images from ISO base images gave me a better understanding of virtualization. It made the physical-to-virtual and virtual-to-Azure migrations much more intuitive. The source environment did not have to be abstract.

You can take advantage of your six years of experience with on-premises systems. Pure cloud engineers understand the direction in which organizations are moving. Engineers, who have managed the legacy infrastructure in a large organization, understand what the organizations are migrating away from. This distinction will change the way you assess risks and plan Hyper Care.

Understanding legacy environments is a must-have for migration engineers. It’s why you can see failures coming before the tool even reports them.

#CloudMigration #PowerShell #M365Migration