Welcome to yet another article on cloud migration. Remember that cloud migration is not a one-time activity but an ongoing process. Continuously monitor your cloud environment, solicit feedback from users and adapt your strategies to meet evolving business requirements. There are four main phases involved in providing a common and effective cloud migration. With that being said, let’s dive right in.
- Assessment and Planning (Define Strategy and Perform Assessment): In this initial phase, you assess the organization’s current IT infrastructure, applications and workloads to determine their suitability for migration to the cloud. Based on the assessment, you create a detailed migration plan that outlines the timeline, resource requirements, and potential risks involved in the migration process.
Set Business Strategy: Establish clear business outcomes and define business justification.
Use a split approach for cloud implementation: Perform a readiness assessment by identifying applications that need to move to the cloud and choosing applications with minimum dependencies and assets.
Use tools to help you plan: Cloud Adoption Readiness Tool(CART) from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator, Azure Pricing Calculator, Azure Cost Management etc.
2. Plan for Readiness (Proof of Concept): Before moving all your applications and workloads to the cloud, it’s a good idea to perform a Proof of Concept or pilot migration. Choose a subset of applications or less critical workloads and migrate them to the cloud. This allows you to test the migration process, identify any potential issues, and validate the effectiveness of the chosen cloud provider and services. It also helps you gain confidence in your migration plan and provides an opportunity for staff training.
Address gaps uncovered in the assessment phase.
Keep resources prepared with technical readiness.
Set in place processes to drive business and technology changes.
Define a technology plan to enable business outcomes.
Focus on building your baseline environment.
3. Migration Execution (Adopt and Migrate): In this phase, you execute the actual migration based on the detailed plan developed earlier. The migration process may involve different strategies, such as rehosting, refactoring, rearchitecting, or using third-party SaaS solutions, depending on the nature of your applications. Migrating workloads to the cloud should be done in a carefully planned sequence to minimize downtime and disruption to the business.
Adoption and Migration: Design, migrate and validate each application, replicate existing resources to the cloud with the least changes and transition users from existing solution to cloud solution.
Preparation: Prepare an estimate of the workloads to be migrated, define team structure, access requirements and separation of responsibilities, and specify processes and documentation required to review and approve changes.
Tools for Migration: AWS Server Migration Service, AWS Database Migration Service, Azure Migrate, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Migration for Computer Engine etc.
4. Management, Optimization and Governance: Once the migration is complete, the focus shifts to optimizing the cloud environment for performance, cost, and security. This involves fine-tuning configurations, rightsizing resources, implementing cost controls, and setting up proper governance and monitoring mechanisms. Regularly review your cloud infrastructure to ensure it aligns with the changing needs of your organization and to identify opportunities for further optimization and improvement. Tools to help you:
AWS Management and Governs.
AWS Control Tower.
AWS Cloud Watch.
Azure Advisor.
Azure Monitor.
Azure Policy.
GCP Security Center.
GCP Alert Center.
Volt.
Please note that the specific steps and terminologies for cloud migration may vary depending on the organization, cloud providers, and industry best practices at the time of your migration. Always stay updated with the latest cloud technologies and consult with cloud experts or experienced cloud migration teams to ensure a successful and smooth migration process. If this is the first time reading my article, check for The Five Rs of Cloud Migration Strategy and follow my Twitter page for more updates.