Azure Managed Instance Migration Checklist for Oracle DBAs
Two weeks before our planned Azure migration cutover, the project manager asked me, "We've tested the migration three times in dev. What could possibly go wrong in production?"
I showed him my checklist. Sixty-three items. He thought I was being overcautious. Until we hit production and discovered our application connection strings were hardcoded with Oracle-specific syntax that Azure SQL Managed Instance didn't support. The migration succeeded, but the application couldn't connect.
That's when he understood: migration isn't just moving data. It's validating every assumption about how your application interacts with the database.
This checklist represents lessons from five Azure Managed Instance migrations, including two that required emergency rollbacks. If you're an Oracle DBA planning an Azure migration, this is the checklist I wish I had on my first project.