An insurance company running a critical policy management database on SQL Server 2008 needed a modern, cloud-ready platform. Azure Migrate AI assessed the workload and guided a zero-data-loss migration to Azure SQL Database.
The policy management database ran on SQL Server 2008 R2 — out of Microsoft support, incompatible with modern BI tools, and increasingly slow under growing data volumes. A failed upgrade attempt two years prior had made leadership risk-averse about trying again.
Used Azure Migrate to automatically assess the SQL Server 2008 instance — identifying compatibility issues, deprecated features, unsupported T-SQL syntax, and providing an AI-generated remediation plan.
Used Copilot for Azure Data to rewrite deprecated T-SQL patterns, update data types, and redesign several tables that had accumulated years of technical debt — with AI suggesting optimal index strategies for Azure SQL.
Set up Azure DMS in continuous sync mode, replicating all changes from the on-premises SQL Server 2008 instance to Azure SQL Database in real time — enabling a near-zero-downtime cutover.
Ran automated row-count reconciliation, checksum validation, and business rule verification across all 847 tables before cutover, with Azure Purview documenting complete data lineage.
Performed the production cutover during a planned maintenance window, switching application connection strings to Azure SQL Database with 1 hour 47 minutes of total downtime — well under the 4-hour SLA.
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