Migration Decision Assistant

Open source decision assistant for Azure Local vs Windows Server / Hyper-V deployments.

🌐 Live: azure-hacker.github.io/migration-decision-assistant

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What it is

The Migration Decision Assistant is a deterministic, rule-based wizard. It asks structured questions about a customer environment (sites, hosts, VMs, cores, storage strategy, Linux/Windows mix, sovereignty, AVD, AKS, Foundry Local, and other strategic workloads) and returns:

• One or more recommended deployment patterns with rationale, "best for", and "watch-outs"
• A side-by-side decision matrix with a visual lean indicator between Azure Local and Hyper-V
• Pros & cons plus when-to-choose cards for Azure Local, Hyper-V, and Azure-native
• Workload overlays (AVD, AKS, Foundry Local, GitHub Enterprise local, M365 Local, sovereign / disconnected, migration / DR, cross-site availability)
• A hybrid recommendation when both platforms score meaningfully and the workloads naturally split
• A migration effort estimator (parallel migrations, waves, hours, weeks) tuned for the chosen migration tooling (Azure Migrate, SCVMM, WAC vMode, mixed)
• A container platform verdict (AKS-on-Local vs ARO vs strategy review) when Linux ≥ 40 %
• A pointer to Azure-native (cloud-first) alternatives and the Azure pricing calculator
• Links to Microsoft Unified delivery, activation, and Day-2 operations offerings

Companion features

• 📑 PPTX export — one-click branded deck with executive summary, environment, recommendations, decision matrix, IT ops features, migration effort, pros/cons, considerations, implementation phases, and Microsoft Unified CTA
• 🔗 Shareable link — encodes your answers in a URL (no server, no storage)
• 🧭 Mandatory question enforcement — Continue is blocked until required questions are answered
• 🌗 Light / dark themes — persisted across sessions
• 📱 Mobile responsive — slide-in nav drawer on small screens
• 🧪 RFI / RFP companion (Preview) — searchable knowledge base for sales-led discovery responses
• 🔄 Auto-updates every 2 weeks — versions pinned to public Microsoft documentation as the single source of truth

Patterns surfaced today:

• Hyper-V Failover Cluster
• Hyper-V Campus / stretched cluster
• Hyper-V with iSCSI / SMB / FC SAN-attach
• Azure Local connected hyperconverged
• Azure Local with Resilient Cross-Site (RAC)
• Azure Local multi-rack
• Azure Local with disaggregated SAN
• Azure Local Disconnected Operations (ALDO)

Who it is for

• Microsoft POD leads scoping VMware-exit engagements
• Sales / pre-sales answering RFI / RFP questions
• Customers and partners who want a structured, documented frame for the Azure Local vs. Hyper-V decision

This tool is not a replacement for sizing, licensing review, validated hardware confirmation, identity / security / networking design, supportability review, or formal architecture review.

Privacy

No data you enter is stored on a server. All evaluation runs in your browser. You can self-host or run it locally if you'd prefer to keep everything on your machine.

Open source disclaimer

This is an open source community tool. It is not an official Microsoft product, support channel, or commitment. Recommendations are informational and reference the public Microsoft Learn documentation in effect at the time of evaluation.

Auto-updated reference versions

Public Microsoft documentation is the single source of truth. A scheduled GitHub Actions workflow runs every 14 days, fetches the latest Azure Local and Windows Server release names from Microsoft Learn, and updates src/data/versions.json. Any change is committed automatically, which redeploys GitHub Pages.

You can also trigger the refresh manually from the Actions → auto-update-versions → Run workflow menu.

Tech stack

• React 19 + TypeScript
• Vite
• GitHub Pages for hosting
• GitHub Actions for build, deploy, and version refresh

Develop locally

npm install
npm run dev      # local dev server
npm run lint     # ESLint
npm run build    # type-check + production build
npm run preview  # preview the built site

Deploy

The deploy-pages.yml workflow builds and publishes on every push to main.

Contribute and report issues

• Open an issue: https://github.com/Azure-hacker/migration-decision-assistant/issues/new
• Add a deployment pattern, refine the scoring, or improve the rationale text by editing src/decisionEngine.ts
• Improve the questionnaire by editing the stages array in the same file

PRs welcome.