Migrating to Azure DevOps Services: A Comprehensive Guide

Moving your on-premises Azure DevOps Server to the cloud-based Azure DevOps Services is a strategic decision that can unlock a world of benefits for your organization. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the entire migration process, from understanding the basics to completing the post-migration tasks.

Understanding the Migration Process

Before embarking on your migration journey, it’s essential to familiarize yourself with the key concepts and considerations involved. Let’s dive into the details:

What Data Gets Migrated?

Not all data is migrated during the process. While the entire team project collection, including work items, version control, build definitions, and more, gets transferred to Azure DevOps Services, some data is excluded. This includes extensions, service hooks, load test data, pipeline agents and pools, user mentions, and Project Server integrations. It’s crucial to understand these exclusions to plan your post-migration actions accordingly.

Project Limits in Azure DevOps Services

Azure DevOps Services imposes a limit of 1,000 projects per organization, although it’s recommended to keep it under 300 for optimal performance. If your on-premises collection contains numerous projects, you may need to consider splitting the collection or deleting older projects to stay within the limit.

Mapping Between On-Premises and Cloud

It’s important to understand the relationship between on-premises team project collections and Azure DevOps Services organizations. Each collection in Azure DevOps Server corresponds to a single SQL database and maps directly to an Azure DevOps Services organization. This one-to-one mapping means you can’t migrate a collection database into an existing organization or consolidate multiple collections into a single organization.

Choosing a Data Center

When setting up your Azure DevOps Services organization, you can select the location (data center) that best suits your needs. Make a note of the region’s shorthand code, as you’ll need it during the migration process.

Licensing and Pricing Considerations

A common question around migration is the licensing requirements for Azure DevOps Services. The good news is that you likely already have the necessary licenses. We’ve provided a user licenses worksheet to help you estimate the costs, but it’s always a good idea to reach out to your Developer Solutions Sales Specialist or Microsoft Reseller for personalized guidance.

Reserving Your Organization Name

To ensure your preferred organization name is available for the final migration, we recommend reserving it early on. You can create a temporary organization with a placeholder name and then rename it after the successful migration.

Next Steps

Now that you have a solid understanding of the migration process, it’s time to dive deeper. In the next phase, you’ll learn how to complete the prerequisites for migration and validate your on-premises data. Follow the Complete Prerequisites for Migration guide to get started.

For more information, please refer to the Get started with Azure DevOps Data Migration Tool article.