A brief introduction to Azure Lift and Shift Migration

As businesses increasingly move their IT workloads to the cloud, lift and shift migration has emerged as one of the fastest and most straightforward ways to transition to Microsoft Azure. This migration strategy involves moving applications and workloads from on-premises data centers or other cloud providers to Azure with minimal or no modification to their underlying architecture.

What is Lift and Shift?

Lift and shift, also known as rehosting, is a migration approach where:

• Existing applications and data are moved as-is to Azure.
• No major changes are made to the application code, architecture, or functionality.
• The goal is to quickly transfer workloads while reducing operational costs and increasing scalability.

This method contrasts with other migration strategies like re-platforming (making minor optimizations to take advantage of cloud-native features) or refactoring (rebuilding applications to be cloud-native).

Why businesses choose cloud and Lift and Shift migration

According to Gartner, by the end of 2027, over 90% of organizations will adopt hybrid cloud to enhance their digital infrastructure. Moreover, all cloud segments will record double-digital growth in 2025.

Many of the companies on legacy systems opt for lift and shift as their first step toward cloud adoption due to its speed and cost-effectiveness.

Key reasons companies choose Lift and Shift:

• ‍Speed of migration – No need for extensive code modifications, making it one of the quickest ways to move to the cloud.‍
• Cost savings – Eliminates the need for maintaining on-premise hardware and reduces CAPEX (capital expenditures).‍
• Minimal risk – Since applications remain unchanged, there is less risk of disruption compared to rearchitecting.‍
• Immediate scalability – Azure provides elastic compute power, allowing businesses to scale resources as needed.‍
• Security and compliance – Lift and shift migration enhances security by leveraging Azure’s built-in compliance tools.

When is Lift and Shift the right choice?

While lift and shift is an efficient cloud migration strategy, it's not suitable for every workload. The decision to choose this method should be based on specific business needs and application requirements.

Lift and Shift is ideal for:

Lift and Shift May NOT be ideal If:

• The application requires significant re-architecture to benefit from cloud scalability.
• Performance optimization is a key goal—rehosting doesn’t always take full advantage of cloud-native features.
• The business wants to leverage cloud-native services like serverless computing or Kubernetes from the start.

Azure lift and shift migration offers a fast, cost-effective way for businesses to transition to the cloud without modifying their applications. However, companies must carefully assess whether this strategy aligns with their long-term cloud goals.

In the next chapter, we’ll explore the benefits of lift and shift migration and how businesses can maximize efficiency while minimizing risks.

Key benefits of Lift and Shift to Azure

As businesses move their IT infrastructure to the cloud, lift and shift migration remains one of the most efficient ways to achieve cloud adoption. By rehosting workloads without code modifications, companies can quickly leverage Azure’s scalability, security, and cost efficiencies while minimizing migration complexity.

According to Flexera’s 2024 State of the Cloud Report, 89% of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy, and Azure is a leading provider of public cloud services for business.

Many organizations start with a lift-and-shift approach before gradually optimizing and modernizing their cloud infrastructure.

Why Lift and Shift to Azure?

Azure provides a highly flexible and cost-efficient environment for businesses transitioning from on-premise or other cloud providers. Below are the core advantages of adopting a lift and shift strategy in Azure.

1. Faster migration with minimal downtime

One of the most significant advantages of lift and shift is speed. Unlike re-architecting or refactoring applications, which can take months or even years, lift and shift allows businesses to move workloads to Azure within weeks.

• No need for extensive code changes, making migration simpler.
• Minimal downtime, ensuring business continuity during the transition.
• Quick testing and deployment, allowing teams to validate workloads before full-scale migration.

Example: A global retail company moving its ERP system to Azure with lift and shift can do so in weeks rather than undergoing a year-long refactor.

2. Cost savings with Pay-as-You-Go pricing

One of the most compelling reasons for Azure migration is cost efficiency. On-premise infrastructure is expensive, requiring high upfront costs for hardware, maintenance, and energy consumption.

How Azure reduces costs:

Microsoft Azure Cost Management tools help businesses track and optimize cloud spending post-migration.

3. Immediate scalability and flexibility

On-premise systems lack agility, making it difficult to scale up or down based on demand. Azure eliminates this issue by offering instant resource scalability.

• Auto-scaling capabilities allow businesses to adjust workloads dynamically.
• Global availability ensures that applications can be deployed in multiple Azure regions.
• Disaster recovery and redundancy help maintain business continuity.

Example: A logistics company with seasonal fluctuations can scale up Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) during peak seasons and scale down after to avoid unnecessary costs.

4. Enhanced security and compliance

Security is a major concern for cloud migration. Azure provides enterprise-grade security, ensuring that applications remain protected post-migration.

Key security benefits:

• Built-in compliance certifications (ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR).
• Advanced threat protection with Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
• Role-based access control (RBAC) to manage user permissions.
• Encryption at rest and in transit to protect sensitive data.

According to the Google Cloud Brand Pulse Survey 2023, cybersecurity was the number 1 investment priority for global organizations at 31%.

This demand is driving leaders in the CSP market, as Azure has over 100 compliance offerings—more than any other cloud provider.

5. Seamless integration with Azure Services

After a successful lift and shift migration, businesses can start integrating cloud-native Azure services to further enhance their IT landscape.

Post-migration optimization options:

The lift and shift migration approach allows businesses to quickly transition to Azure while reducing costs, enhancing security, and achieving instant scalability. While it may not offer cloud-native optimizations immediately, it serves as a crucial first step in digital transformation.

In the next section, we’ll explore a step-by-step process for executing a successful Azure lift and shift migration.

Step-by-step process for Lift and Shift migration to Azure

A successful Azure lift and shift migration requires careful planning, execution, and optimization. While the process does not involve code modifications, it still demands a structured approach to minimize downtime, optimize costs, and ensure application stability.

To ensure a smooth transition, businesses should follow these six key steps when migrating workloads to Azure.

Step 1: Assess existing infrastructure and workloads

Before migrating workloads, conduct a thorough assessment of your current on-premises or cloud environment. This step helps identify dependencies, performance requirements, and potential risks.

Key considerations:

• What applications and databases will be migrated?
• Are there dependencies between workloads that need special handling?
• What are the current resource consumption metrics (CPU, RAM, storage, network usage)?
• Will applications require post-migration optimization to reduce costs?

Recommended tool: Azure Migrate

• Automatically assesses your current infrastructure.
• Provides a cost estimation for running workloads in Azure.
• Identifies compatibility issues and right-sizing recommendations.

The majority of businesses that migrate to Azure do so using Azure Migrate for assessment and planning.

Step 2: Choose the right Azure Services for migration

After assessment, select the appropriate Azure services to host your workloads.

Common Azure Services for Lift and Shift

Best Practice: Choose reserved instances or auto-scaling options to optimize costs.

Step 3: Perform a test Migration

Before executing a full-scale migration, conduct a pilot migration to identify and fix potential issues.

Why test migration is crucial:

• Ensures workload compatibility with Azure.
• Helps validate performance benchmarks post-migration.
• Identifies network, security, or latency issues before going live.

Recommended approach:

• Migrate a small subset of workloads first.
• Use Azure Test Plans to simulate load and performance.
• Validate security configurations (firewall rules, access controls).

Example: A financial services company migrating its SQL Server database to Azure tests workloads in a staging environment, reducing production downtime from hours to minutes during full migration.

Step 4: Execute the full migration with minimal downtime

Once testing is successful, proceed with the full lift and shift migration using Azure’s native migration tools.

Recommended migration methods:

Best practice: Migrate workloads during off-peak or out-of-office hours to minimize user impact.

Step 5: Optimize performance and costs post-migration

Once workloads are in Azure, fine-tune performance and optimize costs.

Key post-migration tasks:

• Right-size VMs → Adjust resources based on actual cloud usage.
• Enable Azure Auto-scaling → Prevent over-provisioning and cost wastage.
• Implement Azure Monitor & Application Insights → Track performance, detect anomalies.
• Apply security best practices → Ensure compliance with Azure Security Center.

Post-migration cost optimization example

Businesses that right-size their Azure resources post-migration can reduce cloud costs significantly.

Step 6: Ensure ongoing monitoring and security

After migration, set up continuous monitoring, security enforcement, and compliance management.

Recommended monitoring & security tools:

Set up alerts to notify teams of performance issues or security vulnerabilities.

Executing an Azure lift and shift migration requires a structured approach to minimize downtime, reduce costs, and optimize performance. Following this six-step process ensures a seamless transition while maintaining business continuity.

In the next chapter, we’ll explore best practices to further optimize lift and shift migration for long-term efficiency.

Best practices for a successful Azure Lift and Shift migration

While lift and shift migration is one of the fastest ways to move workloads to Azure, it requires careful execution to avoid performance, security, and cost-related pitfalls. Simply rehosting applications without optimizing for the cloud can lead to inefficiencies, unexpected expenses, or security vulnerabilities.

A significant percentage of cloud cost inefficiencies are due to poor migration planning and resource over-provisioning. To ensure a smooth and cost-effective transition, businesses should follow these best practices for Azure lift and shift migration.

1. Use Azure Migrate for pre-migration assessment

Why?

• Ensures that all dependencies and configurations are accounted for before migration.
• Provides cost estimates for running workloads in Azure.
• Identifies potential compatibility issues between on-premise applications and Azure.

How?

• Install Azure Migrate Appliance to scan on-premise workloads.
• Use dependency visualization to detect application dependencies.
• Generate right-sizing recommendations to avoid over-provisioning.

Companies using Azure Migrate reduce migration errors by 50% due to pre-migration insights.

2. Optimize resource allocation for cost efficiency

Why?

• Over-provisioning resources wastes cloud spend, leading to unexpected cost overruns.
• Azure offers multiple pricing models that can reduce expenses.

Best practices for cost optimization:

Tools to use:
Azure Cost Management – Tracks cloud expenses and suggests optimizations.
Azure Advisor – Provides real-time cost-saving recommendations.

3. Secure workloads with Azure Security best practices

Why?

• A lift and shift migration often inherits on-premise security flaws, leaving workloads exposed.
• Azure offers built-in security tools to detect threats and enforce compliance.

Security best practices:

Companies implementing Azure Security Center can reduce cloud security incidents by double-digit percentage within the first year.

4. Minimize downtime with a phased migration approach

Why?

• Migrating everything at once increases the risk of downtime and data loss.
• A phased approach ensures that critical applications remain operational.

Recommended migration plan:

Use Azure Site Recovery to create real-time replication before migrating critical workloads.

5. Perform post-migration performance optimization

Why?

• Many businesses forget to fine-tune performance post-migration, leading to latency issues and resource inefficiencies.

Post-migration checklist:

• Monitor performance using Azure Monitor – Detects CPU, memory, and network bottlenecks.
• Enable Application Insights – Tracks real-time app health and user activity.
• Optimize storage costs – Move cold data to Azure Blob Storage (Cool or Archive tier).
• Reconfigure load balancing – Use Azure Load Balancer or Azure Front Door for high availability.

Companies using Azure Monitor can reduce cloud performance issues due to proactive alerting.

6. Implement a cloud governance framework

Why?

• Without governance policies, businesses risk uncontrolled cloud sprawl, leading to security gaps and cost inefficiencies.

How?

• Define tagging policies to track cloud usage.
• Set up budget alerts in Azure Cost Management.
• Use Azure Policy to enforce compliance across cloud resources.

Example: A healthcare company used Azure Policy to automate HIPAA compliance, significantly reducing audit time.

7. Enable Disaster Recovery and High Availability

Why?

• Cloud environments are not immune to failures. Disaster recovery planning is crucial for business continuity.

Best practices for High Availability:

A successful lift and shift migration to Azure is more than just moving workloads—it requires proactive cost management, security enforcement, and performance optimization.

Key takeaways for a smooth migration:

• Assess workloads with Azure Migrate before migration.
• Right-size resources to avoid cloud overspending.
• Apply security best practices with Azure Security Center.
• Monitor and optimize workloads post-migration.
• Set up disaster recovery plans for business continuity.

In the next chapter, we’ll explore common pitfalls businesses face during lift and shift migration—and how to avoid them.

Common pitfalls businesses face while migrating to Azure on Lift and Shift - and how to avoid them

While lift and shift migration to Azure is one of the easiest cloud migration strategies, it still presents challenges that can lead to performance issues, security risks, or cost inefficiencies if not properly managed.

To ensure a smooth and cost-effective transition, businesses must proactively avoid these common pitfalls.

1. Ignoring performance optimization after migration

The mistake:
Many organizations assume that moving workloads to Azure automatically improves performance, but applications that were optimized for on-premise environments may not fully utilize cloud resources.

How to avoid it:

• Right-size VMs post-migration using Azure Advisor recommendations.
• Enable Auto-Scaling to adjust compute resources based on real-time demand.
• Use Azure Monitor & Application Insights to detect performance bottlenecks.

Example:
A retail company migrates its eCommerce application to Azure but faces slow load times due to incorrect VM sizing. After reconfiguring workloads with Azure Auto-Scaling, response times improves while reducing cloud costs.

2. Underestimating migration complexity

The mistake:
Some businesses assume lift and shift is as simple as copying workloads to Azure, but interdependencies, licensing, and configuration mismatches can cause unexpected failures.

How to avoid it:

• Perform a detailed assessment using Azure Migrate before migration.
• Identify application dependencies and migrate workloads in logical phases.
• Conduct test migrations before full deployment.

Migration complexity

Companies that conduct test migrations report fewer deployment issues than those that skip testing.

3. Security misconfigurations

The Mistake:
Rehosting workloads without updating security configurations often exposes sensitive data to cyber threats.

How to avoid it:

• Use Azure Security Center to detect security vulnerabilities.
• Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to prevent unauthorized access.
• Encrypt data at rest and in transit using Azure Key Vault.

Common security gaps in Lift and Shift Migrations

The majority of security breaches involve misconfigured cloud settings, making post-migration security audits critical.

4. Neglecting cloud cost control

The mistake:
Many businesses over-provision resources, assuming they need the same capacity as their on-premise infrastructure, leading to unexpected cloud bills.

How to avoid it:

• Use Azure Cost Management to track and optimize cloud spending.
• Switch to Azure Reserved Instances for predictable workloads (up to 72% savings).
• Implement auto-shutdown policies for non-critical workloads (e.g., test environments).

5. No post-migration testing or optimization

The mistake:
Some businesses consider migration complete once workloads are running on Azure, without verifying performance, security, or cost-efficiency.

How to avoid it:

• Perform load testing to ensure applications meet expected performance levels.
• Set up real-time monitoring dashboards using Azure Monitor.
• Continuously optimize cloud workloads by analyzing usage trends.

Post-migration checklist

Example:
A logistics company notices an increase in latency after migration. By optimizing Azure network configurations, response times improves within weeks.

6. Overlooking backup and Disaster Recovery planning

The mistake:
Failing to implement disaster recovery (DR) strategies can lead to major data loss or extended downtime in case of failure.

How to avoid it:

• Use Azure Backup for automatic data protection.
• Set up geo-redundant storage to replicate data across regions.
• Implement Azure Site Recovery for high availability.

Disaster Recovery essentials

A successful Azure lift and shift migration requires more than just moving workloads—it demands cost control, security enforcement, and ongoing performance optimization.

Key takeaways to avoid common pitfalls:

• Right-size workloads to prevent cloud overspending.
• Conduct pre-migration testing using Azure Migrate.
• Implement security best practices post-migration.
• Set up cost monitoring with Azure Cost Management.
• Establish disaster recovery strategies for business continuity.

In the next chapter, let’s summarize the benefits, pitfalls and best practices of Lift & Shift migration on Azure.

Conclusion and next steps

Migrating workloads to Microsoft Azure using the lift and shift approach offers a fast, cost-effective pathway to cloud adoption. However, businesses must go beyond simply rehosting applications to ensure long-term performance, security, and cost efficiency.

Key takeaways from this guide:

• Lift and shift is ideal for businesses seeking a quick migration with minimal code changes.
• Azure Migrate simplifies the assessment and migration process, reducing risks and unexpected costs.
• Cost control is essential—right-sizing VMs, using Reserved Instances, and implementing auto-scaling can cut cloud expenses by up to 72%.
• Security must be a priority—using Azure Security Center, encryption, and role-based access ensures data protection.
• Post-migration optimization is key—monitor workloads, analyze usage, and implement cloud-native optimizations over time.

What’s Next?

For organizations planning their Azure lift and shift migration, the next steps include:

• Conducting an in-depth cloud readiness assessment using Azure Migrate.
• Defining a phased migration approach to minimize risks and downtime.
• Optimizing cloud resources post-migration for performance and cost efficiency.
• Implementing cloud governance policies to ensure security and compliance.
• Exploring cloud-native optimizations such as serverless computing, containers, and AI-driven automation.

While lift and shift provides a fast migration route, businesses should view it as a first step in their cloud journey. Gradual modernization and optimization will unlock the full potential of Azure, driving innovation, scalability, and operational efficiency.

Ready to migrate to Azure? Ensure a seamless transition by leveraging Azure’s built-in migration tools, cost management features, and security frameworks for a future-proof cloud strategy.

‍