Migrating SSIS to Azure – an Overview

For quite some time now, there’s been the possibility to lift-and-shift your on-premises SSIS project to Azure Data Factory. There, they run in an Integration Runtime, a cluster of virtual machines that will execute your SSIS packages. In the beginning, you only had the option to use the project deployment model and host your SSIS catalog in either an Azure SQL DB, or in a SQL Server Managed Instance.

But over time, features were added and now the package deployment model has been supported for quite some time as well. Even more, the “legacy SSIS package store” is also supported. For those who still remember this, it’s the SSIS service where you can log into with SSMS and see which packages are stored in the service (either the file system or the MSDB database) and which are currently running.

The following Microsoft blog post gives a good overview of the journey that was made, and it’s a definite must-read for anyone who wishes to migrate their SSIS solution: Blast to The Future: Accelerating Legacy SSIS Migrations into Azure Data Factory.

Something that surprised me in this blog post was this:

“…our on-premises telemetry shows that SSIS instances with Package Deployment Model continue to outnumber those with Project Deployment Model by two to one”

Microsoft (Sandy Winarko, Product Manager)

This means a lot of customers still use the package deployment model. Many presentations at conferences about SSIS (even mine) are always geared towards the project deployment model. This is something I will need to take into account next time I present about SSIS.

Anyway, I have done some fair amount of writing on the Azure-SSIS IR:

• Configure an Azure SQL Server Integration Services Integration Runtime
• Automate the Azure-SSIS Integration Runtime Start-up and Shutdown – Part 1
• Azure-SSIS Integration Runtime Start-up and Shutdown with Webhooks – Part 2
• Connect to On-premises Data in Azure Data Factory with the Self-hosted Integration Runtime – Part 1
• Connect to On-premises Data in Azure Data Factory with the Self-hosted Integration Runtime – Part 2
• Customized Setup for the Azure-SSIS Integration Runtime
• Execute SSIS Package in Azure with DTEXEC Utility
• Executing Integration Services Packages in the Azure-SSIS Integration Runtime
• Parallel package execution in Azure-SSIS Runtime
• SSIS Catalog Maintenance in the Azure Cloud
• Migrate a Package Deployment Integration Services Project to Azure
• Using Files Stored in Azure File Services with Integration Services – Part 1
• Using Files Stored in Azure File Services with SQL Server Integration Services – Part 2
• Azure-Enabled Integration Services Projects in Visual Studio