Moving data, applications, and other elements to the cloud to run it over a cloud-based environment provided by the public cloud service provider is referred to as cloud migration. Having a reliable cloud migration strategy is important to ensure the successful transition of entire data and applications.
This article will give you broad information about steps and best practices to migrate to the cloud. Plus, you will get to learn about the process to build a cloud strategy.
The 5 R’s of Cloud Migration Strategy
Before you begin, it is important to understand the different types of cloud migration strategies that help you move applications and data to the cloud seamlessly.
- Rehost
Often known as ‘lift and shift’, this strategy utilizes IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) approach. It requires redeploying your existing applications and data on the cloud server. The rehosting strategy is easy and suited for businesses that are new to cloud architecture.
- Refactor
The refactoring or the ‘lift, tinker, and shift’ strategy is appropriate when you need to optimize your business applications for the cloud. When you utilize this strategy, you follow PaaS (Platform as a Service) approach where the core application structure remains intact.
- Revise
During this strategy, a significant modification is required to the code and architecture of the applications you are moving to the cloud. It enables the applications to utilize cloud services to their full potential. However, you need advanced knowledge to employ this strategy.
- Rebuild
The rebuilding strategy discards the current code base and replaces it with a new one to take the revised approach further. Using the rebuild strategy is only recommended when the existing business solutions fail to meet business needs. It is time-consuming as well.
- Replace
This approach includes even more challenges than the rebuild as the organization does not recreate its applications from scratch. Only the data from the applications are migrated using predeveloped applications offered by the cloud vendor.
Migrating Data to Cloud: Best Practices
Businesses across the globe are adopting digital transformation and cloud migration is one such effort. Forbes predicts that 80% of Enterprise IT will migrate to the cloud by 2025.
For a successful shift to the cloud, learning the best practices is important. The best practices to move data to the cloud include:
• Planning for migration
The process to migrate data begins way before you write the code and start the migration. You must plan migration keeping in mind the current organization workflow and the legacy system.
• Analysing application performance
Monitoring system resources such as the processor, storage, network, etc. provide you an insight into the performance of individual applications. You can take note of these metrics in the current infrastructure setup and then compare them to the new state post-migration.
• Validating cloud security
The security of applications and their data is the primary responsibility of the cloud administrator. Machine data can play a vital role in securing information processing before, during, and after the transition.
• Assuring compliance
Whether your business is serving tech or non-tech arenas, the chances are that it is subject to regulations. Failing to follow these guidelines can have serious implications. Carefully evaluate the private cloud vendors you are partnering with for migrating data to the cloud.
• Ensuring data portability
Multi-cloud portability has become more prevalent than ever. Companies are using more than three or even more cloud solutions. Businesses are reaping the maximum benefits of the cloud by executing production workloads in different clouds and ensuring accurate workload portability.
How Does Cloud Migration Benefit Businesses?
Organizations with distributed teams face challenges in accessing their data and applications. With cloud computing, businesses get the chance to store, access, and manage everything from one single platform.
Moving data to the cloud is beneficial in many ways as you get the flexibility to control the entire infrastructure without worrying about upgrades. Some of the benefits include cost optimization, better agility, improved adaptability, automatic updates, and robust security.
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