Workloads are moved to the cloud for a variety of reasons. The public cloud is far more scalable than most on-premises data centers; its vast array of resources, services, and automation enables large, complex, and universally available workloads that respond flexibly to user demand. These extensive services enable businesses to create workloads and access data in novel and inventive ways. Companies can also shift from capital-intensive hardware and software investments to recurring operational costs.
The process of migrating a workload from an on-premises data center to a cloud provider, on the other hand, is neither simple nor automated. It necessitates careful planning, ample preparation, and well-defined processes. Let’s go over the major steps in any successful cloud migration.
6 Essential Cloud Migration Steps
While migration drivers and goals vary, the migration process can be divided into 12 distinct steps that serve as the foundation of a comprehensive migration checklist.
Create a business case. Why does the company need to migrate this specific workload? There is no one-size-fits-all solution, purpose, or benefit for every cloud use case. Migrating a workload to the cloud may increase flexibility, whereas using the cloud as a storage target may be more convenient. Understand the motivations, such as cost savings, reduced infrastructure burden, scalability, availability, and improved user satisfaction.
Determine the best migration strategy
The weightiest decision in any cloud migration is whether to modify an app to take advantage of cloud benefits. Businesses can use one of four main migration approaches, depending on their cloud and workload expertise:
- Rehost
- Refactor
- Revise
- Rebuild
- Replace
Different approaches can be taken for different workloads or use cases, and migration alternatives are not all-or-nothing. Everything else, from costs to architectural decisions, depends on which approach you to take.
Costs and requirements should be assessed
Understand the current cost and performance characteristics of the workload. Examine the costs of purchasing, operating, and maintaining local servers. Examine the workload’s local performance carefully, gathering metrics like transactions per second and bandwidth usage with an application performance monitoring (APM) tool.
Select a cloud environment
Following that, consider the target environment that best reflects long-term business requirements. These are typically private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud:
- Private cloud
- Public cloud
- Hybrid cloud
Select a deployment model
There are several methods for obtaining cloud services. The level of convenience and user control varies between models.
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
Platform as a service (PaaS)
Software as a service (SaaS)
- Choose a cloud partner
AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure – the three major public cloud providers, all have a global presence for IaaS and some PaaS deployments. However, many aspects of their cloud’s operation, from individual services and APIs to costs and monitoring, can vary significantly. Businesses typically select a provider based on the scope of services provided as well as any specific functionality required for a given workload.
Create the architecture
IaaS users rely on a cloud architect to design the best cloud architecture for hosting the workload. The architecture typically combines virtualized computing, storage, and networking instances, as well as a variety of services such as databases, logging/monitoring tools, event-driven computing, and others.
To manage a simple rehosting, a simple and straightforward architecture, such as a single computer and storage instance, can be used. The architecture can also be a complex and intricate environment that supports distributed, exceptionally reliable workloads for mission-critical production environments or a network of interconnected components that hosts microservices workloads in the cloud.
An architect will also consider the associated cloud costs associated with the desired architecture and ensure that the workload’s owner budgets appropriately.