Cloud Migration Checklist
You can always consider migrating enterprise applications and data, especially in start-ups to the cloud to avail benefits in terms of cost, scalability, connectivity, security, and simplicity. The cloud platforms even help you to run the software applications and manage data without maintaining expensive on-premise IT infrastructure. You even have the option to choose from several private, public, and hybrid cloud platforms. Likewise, you can migrate the applications to the cloud in a number of ways. But you cannot move your applications and data to the cloud without implementing a robust strategy. Also, you must plan and adopt a number of important steps to simplify and accelerate the cloud migration process.
7 Important Steps in Migrating Applications and Data to the Cloud
- 1) The Right Way to Migrate
You can migrate your applications and data to the cloud in a number of ways – rehost, refactor, revise, replace and rebuild. Hence, it becomes essential to decide the most appropriate migration option. While comparing various cloud migration service options, you must identify the applications which can be migrated to the cloud and the applications which will run on your on-premise infrastructure. Also, you need to assess the usage frequency, criticality, and workload sensitivity of each application to be moved to the cloud. Once you assess and understand the requirements clearly, it will become easier to decide the best way to migrate.
2) Workload Testing and Validation
In addition to assessing and understanding the requirements, you also need to test and validate the performance of application workloads. The testing will help you to determine the resources required to run the application in the cloud – storage size, network bandwidth, number of virtual machines. Also, the test results will make it easier for you to calculate the cost of running applications in the cloud. At the same time, the test results will also help you to decide the best storage services to replace your existing data repository. However, you need to ensure that the workload testing is performed in the production environment and with real network and security controls.
3) Migration Process Analysis
After determining the resources required by the applications, you must prepare a blueprint of the cloud environment. Also, you need to analyze the entire migration process to prepare a robust blueprint. The migration blueprint will help system engineers to understand the migration process and identify the complexities in the migration process. They can further handle the complexities efficiently to migrate the applications to the cloud efficiently. The will further refer to the cloud migration blueprint to ensure that key software components, functionalities, and data are moved to the cloud.
4) Process Architecture Redesigning
The system architectures must redesign the application and process architecture to handle the complexities associated with cloud migration. After finalizing the software components, functionalities, and data to be migrated to the cloud, they have to architect and program the application from scratch. Once the applications are reprogrammed, the system engineers have to reintegrate them with the cloud-based application integration. The seamless integration will help engineers to avoid undesirable consequences after implementing the application in the cloud.
5) Continuous Testing
There are always chances that the migration process may impact the application or process adversely. The engineers must perform continuous testing to identify the flaws in the application, functionality, or integration environment. They even need to automate the continuous testing process to assess the applications and processes with varied cloud-specific test cases and scenarios. The continuous testing must be performed immediately after implementing the applications in the cloud to identify and fix the bugs or flaws before any major breakdown. The engineers can even use continuous testing automation tools to test the applications as part of the migration process.
6) Full Data Backup
Before implementing the applications in the cloud, the system engineers must back up both macro and micro level programs that function based on the input provided by the enterprise systems. Likewise, they also need to back up the existing data to eliminate the chances of data loss during or after the migration process. The backup data will further help the programmers to deploy and run the applications smoothly after being migrated to the cloud. The engineers can easily backup the programs and data by availing the redundancy and backup systems provided by the cloud service providers.
7) Cloud Program Management
Once the applications are migrated to the cloud, you must integrate the application, data, and environment seamlessly. The integration will help you to identify the issues, changes or developments in the applications without any delay. However, it is also important to enable your employees to use cloud-based applications and tools efficiently by providing adequate training.
On the whole, cloud migration is a complex and tedious process. But you can migrate your applications and data to the cloud easily and efficiently by making an elaborate migration strategy. The migration strategy must include and define the key steps required to avail the benefits of migrating to the cloud.