AZURE RESOURCE MOVE

In this blog, I want to address a scenario that most Microsoft CSP partners always face when dealing with customers who are associated to another Microsoft CSP provider. Not only do the Microsoft CSP partners face migration issues but also the individual customers who are on Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft.

Question: What happens when a customer with the Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft or a customer having PAYG subscription wants to move their Azure resources to a CSP subscription?

First and foremost, there is no way to do just a billing transition of a PAYG Azure Subscription to CSP model.

The process will have to be seen as a migration project of the resources from the source subscription to a new CSP Azure Subscription.

So, the process would follow some basic steps:

1 – CSP Partner requests “Reseller Relationship” with the same tenant where customer has his current subscription

2 – Customer accepts “Reseller Relationship.”

3 – CSP Partner creates a new Azure Plan CSP Subscription on the same customer tenant

4 – With a user that is “Owner” of both source subscription and target subscription, you can do “Azure Resource Move” for the supported workloads (you should first evaluate if the resources in the source subscription are or not supported for resource move. My suggestion is for you to go to the “All resources” view and add the column “Resource-type” to the view, so that you have exactly which Resource Provider and Resource Type to look for in the support matrix).

5 – For those resources not possible to move with the tool above, customer/partner will have to redeploy/reconfigure them in the target CSP Azure Subscription.

6 – When all resources are move or reimplemented on the new target subscription, customer/partner can cancel previous source subscription.

Let’s dive deeper into some more details:

PAYG/EA to CSP Migration – Azure Subscriptions

Billing only transition is not possible for the PAYG to CSP scenarios.

For EA to CSP, there is a transition tool (see the table below) but that is only available in scenarios where the Partner is CSP Direct + Azure Expert MSP (competency) and working with a Direct EA Customer.

For CSP to EA/PAYG, there is also no possibility to just do a billing transition. You need to move the resources with Azure Resource Move (those eligible) or redeploy\reconfigure them in the target subscription.

As a general overview guidance about the several processes for Subscription / Resource Migration, I am adding here this table that summarizes it: 

Transition from	Transition To	Move process	Impact to service availability
PAYG	CSP (Any offer type)	CSP Partner will need to leverage resource move	Depends on services used and configuration, not all services can be moved
Indirect EA
Direct EA	CSP (legacy)
Direct EA	CSP (Azure Plan)	Transfer billing account to CSP Only available for Azure Expert MSPs	None
MCA	CSP (Azure Plan)	CSP Partner will need to leverage resource move Alternative toolset considered for the future	Depends on services used and configuration, not all services can be moved
CSP (legacy) @Partner A	CSP (Azure Plan) @Partner A	Transition via Partner Center	None
CSP (legacy) @Partner A	CSP (legacy) @Partner B	Transfer via support request	None
CSP (Azure Plan) @Partner A	CSP (Azure Plan) @Partner B	New tool/process currently available for billing transition here.   Alternatively, CSP Partner can leverage resource move	With Resource Move depends on services used and configuration, not all services can be moved. With the billing transition, it is a simple process of changing billing ownership (please note that Azure Reservations and Software Subscriptions are not possible to transition billing).
CSP (Any offer type) CSP (Any offer type)	PAYG	CSP Partner will need to leverage resource move	Depends on services used and configuration, not all services can be moved
	Indirect or Direct EA
CSP (Azure Plan)	MCA	CSP Partner will need to leverage resource move Alternative toolset considered for the future	Depends on services used and configuration, not all services can be moved

No All the above situations imply that the Azure AD Tenant is the same and not changed.

You also have these official docs link with a table indicating the possible transition methods in each scenario:

Azure subscription and reservation transfer hub | Microsoft Docs

Also consider that if your customer currently has any Azure Reservations in those subscriptions that you will be transferring, those are not transferable with the exception of scenarios of CSP to CSP with Azure Plan where we very recently announced supportability for transfer through Partner Center.

So, they will need to be cancelled in the CSP side and repurchased in CSP.

• Azure Reservations currently can be cancelled without incurring in the penalty fee for early termination:

Ref: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/reservations/exchange-and-refund-azure-reservations

Also, for third-party Azure Marketplace solutions that the costumer may have deployed in their subscription, you need to;

• Check with that software provider any guidance for migrating those, both in terms of technical migration (the Azure Resource Move tool does not support migration of such resources), but also in terms of licensing;
• Check if those offers are also available in target purchasing model (mostly when moving to CSP  because some Azure Marketplace offers may not be published for CSP Customers);

 Some steps and things to consider:

• The procedure for migrating an EA or PAYG Subscription to CSP Subscription is by using Resource Move.
• Please ensure that the resources the customer has in their subscription are all supported for Resource Move.
• Please ensure that all dependencies are moved together. So, if needed, first do a “Resource Group Move” first within the source subscription to consolidate all resources in a single resource group. And then to a “Subscription Resource Move” of all the resources together. After all resources are on the destination subscription, if you need them separated in different resource groups, you could then do a new “Resource Group Move” on the target subscription.
• Azure Resource Move automatically start the move if the validation phase succeeds. If you wish or need to first see the validation results without proceeding with the move automatically, there is also this great article on how to do it using APIs and Postman that you can use to just perform the validation phase and not the move itself.
• When the scenario is to move to CSP, it is always a good recommendation to also check if there are any Classic Deployment (ASM) resources, especially if this is an older subscription. Classic Deployment (ASM) is not supported in CSP, so you would need to first convert those to ARM Deployment. If moving from CSP to other billing models, that will not be a concern.
• When moving the resources to the other subscription, there will be a downtime/freeze on the management plane (although the majority of the resources may continue to run without interruption):

How long will the management-plane downtime be?

• Regarding the resources themselves, if they are supported with Resource Move, there should not be much or no downtime, but that will also depend on several factors, like the size and complexity of the architecture, the migration of dependency services, and if no errors occur.

• So be prepared to open a breakfix case in case of any errors occur.
• For those resources not supported by Resource Move, please do plan for their redeployment or manual migration.
• You customer might most probably be using Public Reserved Ips. These are not supported by Resource Move if they are Standard SKUs:

So, since Public IPs are not customizable and are assigned automatically from an available pool:

Public IP addresses

There is no way for you to ensure to have the same IP after the Subscription Migration. But if you are using DNS to call for the services, the Public IP only needs to be updated on the DNS entry and that would be transparent to users and applications.

• Public IP Address Prefixes, if your customer is using them, ensures that the new IPs would be generated from within that reserved range after the transition, but they will still be automatically generated, meaning that you only know the IP assigned after it was created, and this could be different from the one the VM originally had.

For App Services also check the following article to understand some prerequisites and limitations:

Move Azure App Service resources across resource groups or subscriptions – Azure Resource Manager | Microsoft Docs

PAYG/EA to CSP Migration – User-based Subscriptions (like O365/M365/D365)

Although not being your scenario, I think relevant to add here some considerations, in case you end up having to also migrate some seat-based licensing the customer may have to CSP.

The process for migrating these kinds of subscriptions is just to ensure that they are purchased in CSP and assigned to the users. But, with NCE subscriptions please note that you cannot transfer them mid-term.

So this should be aligned with the end of the current contract the customer may have for their subscriptions they are purchasing in the other model, to avoid having them paying in duplicate.

As the customer tenant sees all available licenses of the same type as a single bucket when assigning them to users, if customer purchases exactly same type of license/SKU in CSP and cancels the others they may have purchased in PAYG or other billing models, there will be no impact on the users because the number of available licenses on the tenant still ensures all users have an assigned license.

Only if customer decides to purchase licenses/SKUs from a different type it is required that the partner or customer ensures the new CSP Subscription licenses are assigned to all users accordingly. Please take into consideration that, to avoid issues for the user’s loosing functionality or access to some data, the purchased licenses need to be equal or above the existing ones. If the customer decides to downgrade the license type and capabilities, please first assess what are the differences between the SKUs (like if there are features/products not available on that lower SKU, or if the consumption/space included (for SharePoint, email or OneDrive, for example) is less than the one they currently have) to ensure no impact or reduced functionality will happen.