If you’re planning on migrating an on-premise workload into Microsoft Azure, but haven’t yet worked with Azure, you may want to know how much to expect your monthly bill will be.

Thankfully, there are several tools at your disposal in estimating costs, and assessing which systems are ready for Azure.

This series we will look at the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit. In another series, we will look at the Microsoft Azure Cost Estimator tool.

• MAP Toolkit – Part 1: Introduction & Installation
• MAP Toolkit – Part 2: First Use & Perform An Inventory
• MAP Toolkit – Part 3: Collect Performance Data
• MAP Toolkit – Part 4: Azure VM Readiness/Capacity Assessment Results

Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit is an agentless inventory, assessment, and reporting tool that can securely assess IT environments for various platform migrations—including Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Office 2013, Office 2010, Office 365, Windows Server 2012 and Windows 2012 R2, SQL Server 2014, Hyper-V, Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track, and Windows Azure.

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit gets your cloud migration planning process going with automated discovery and detailed inventory reporting of web applications, application portfolios, and database readiness for the Windows Azure platform.

Catalog all of the applications in your environment:

Inventory and report on web application portfolios and SQL Server database instances in your environment.

Azure Readiness Assessment & Capacity Assessment:

• Estimate the needed capacity to run your applications on the Windows Azure Platform
• Evaluate applications based on migration difficulty
• Stack rank applications in terms of migration suitability
• Obtain a TCO-ROI analysis for the application
• Helps you to plan for the migration of on-premises workloads to Windows Azure and SQL Azure

Installation

To start the installation you need to first download the installation files from the following location: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd537566.aspx. This will download the MAPSetup.exe file. Copy this file to the system you will install it on, and run the MAPSetup.exe.

On the Welcome screen, click Next.

MAP Toolkit – Install – Welcome Screen

On the screen License Agreement screen, read the license terms, select the ‘I accept the terms in the License Agreement’ checkbox, and then click Next.

MAP Toolkit – Install – License Agreement

On the screen Installation Folder screen, specify the location you want to install the product to, then click Next.

MAP Toolkit – Install – Installation Folder

On the screen Customer Experience Improvement Program screen, choose whether you want to join the CEIP program or not, then click Next.

MAP Toolkit – Install – CEIP

On the screen Begin The Installation screen, click Install.

MAP Toolkit – Install – Being Install

Once the installation has been completed, click Finish.

MAP Toolkit – Install – Install Complete

Next we will go through the first use of the toolkit, and perform the initial inventory of our environment; in Part 2: First Use & Perform An Inventory.