Moving data, applications, and other items to the cloud to run in a cloud environment provided by a public cloud service provider is called cloud migration. Having a solid cloud migration strategy is essential to ensure a successful migration of all data and applications.
This article will provide you with extensive information on the steps and best practices for moving to the cloud. In addition, you will learn about the process of creating a cloud strategy.
The 5 R’s of cloud migration strategies
Before you get started, it’s important to understand the different types of cloud migration strategies that help you move applications and data to the cloud smoothly.
- Post again
This strategy, often known as “lift and shift,” uses an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) approach. This requires redeploying your existing applications and data to a cloud server. The redeployment strategy is simple and suitable for businesses that are new to cloud architecture.
- Refactoring
A refactoring or “lift, fix and change” strategy is appropriate when you need to optimize your business applications for the cloud. If you use this strategy, you stick PaaS (Platform as a Service) an approach that leaves the basic structure of the application intact.
- Revise
This strategy requires significant modification of the code and architecture of the applications you move to the cloud. This allows applications to take full advantage of cloud services. However, you need advanced knowledge to use this strategy.
- Rebuild
A refactoring strategy discards the current code base and replaces it with a new one to take the revised approach further. Using a refactoring strategy is recommended only when existing business solutions do not meet business needs. It also takes a lot of time.
- Replace
This approach involves even more challenges than rebuilding because the organization is not rebuilding its applications from scratch. Only application data is transferred using pre-designed programs offered by the cloud provider.
Moving Data to the Cloud: Best Practices
Companies around the world are embracing digital transformation, and cloud migration is one such effort. This is predicted by Forbes By 2025, 80% of enterprise IT will move to the cloud.
It’s important to learn best practices for a successful cloud transition. Best practices for moving data to the cloud include:
• Migration planning
The data migration process starts long before you write the code and start the migration. You should plan your migration with your organization’s current workflow and legacy system in mind.
• Analysis of application performance
Monitoring system resources such as CPU, storage, network, etc. gives you insight into the performance of individual applications. You can take note of these metrics in your current infrastructure setup and then compare them to the new state after the migration.
• Cloud security check
The security of applications and their data is the primary responsibility of the cloud administrator. Machine data can play an important role in ensuring information is processed before, during and after the transition.
• Ensuring compliance
Whether your business serves the tech or non-tech arena, chances are it’s subject to regulations. Failure to follow these guidelines can have serious consequences. Carefully evaluate the private cloud providers you work with to move your data to the cloud.
• Ensuring data portability
Multi-cloud portability is more common than ever. Companies use more than three and even more cloud solutions. Enterprises get the most out of the cloud by running production workloads across clouds and ensuring accurate workload portability.
How does cloud migration benefit businesses?
Organizations with distributed teams face challenges accessing their data and applications. With cloud computing, businesses are able to store, access and manage everything from a single platform.
Moving data to the cloud is beneficial in many ways, as you get to manage the entire infrastructure without having to worry about upgrades. Some of the benefits include cost optimization, better agility, improved adaptability, automatic updates and robust security.
