Cloud Migration — Stage Setting
Migration Basics | Concepts | Terminology | Benefits- by Utkarsh Sharma TL;DR
STAGE SETTING Migrating to the cloudWhile companies have been gradually adopting cloud strategies and moving their IT operations to the cloud, the COVID pandemic of 2020 saw companies across the planet close physical operations and move to remote and anywhere operations. This drove companies to move their on-premise IT operations to the cloud faster to enable minimal impact to business as usual. With the ever-increasing pace of Cloud migrations, we, at CloudCover, believe that 90% of workloads globally will be on the cloud by 2030. ⛅📈✈️ Gartner predicts that Customer spending on cloud will reach $396 billion in 2021 and grow 21.7% to reach $482 billion in 2022. Also, by 2026, public cloud spending will exceed 45% of all enterprise IT spending, up from less than 17% in 2021. With remote or anywhere working as the new normal, access to data, development and deployment platforms and remote team collaborations are the need of the hour. Advanced cloud infrastructure platforms with innovative features, ease of integration and secured anywhere access is the best choice to enable the new normal working style. Teams dispersed geographically are now able to communicate, collaborate, develop, deploy and support their applications and ensure customer satisfaction. KEY BENEFITS Making the case for migrating to the cloudAs with any key organisational initiative, the decision to migrate IT operations from on-premise to the cloud needs decision makers to fully understand the benefits of this exercise. Here are some key benefits to help organisational decision makers started on this journey: Flexible Remote Management With remote and anywhere working as the norm arising from the COVID pandemic, we have executed migrations of 1000s of virtual machines to the cloud — all with minimal downtime and no physical interactions. With a good internet connection supporting you, the cloud makes it easy to deploy and manage resources from anywhere in the world. King Kong Scalability Business operations often require rapid scaling of your application and infrastructure — done with ease and minimal efforts when working with a trusted cloud partner. Cost Efficiency While some cloud offerings are costly, they are more cost-effective in the longer term, compared to on-premise infrastructure. You only pay for what you use and this is the real beauty of cloud. Fun Fact: Do you know you can run a VM on the cloud for a day for just the cost of a M&M gems packet? Reduced CapEx On-premise IT hardware needs to be selected, acquired, managed, backed up and then periodically upgraded — a costly exercise in terms of both time and money. Moving to the cloud, shifts this responsibility to the Public Cloud providers — who will install, manage, back up and upgrade your infrastructure seamlessly — all for a fixed monthly pay-as-you-use fee. Simple as a Sauce With just a few clicks, you can have your infrastructure up and running on cloud. It’s really that easy to deploy and manage applications on cloud using console, CLI or APIs.
0 Comments
The Migration Strategy and Roadmap - by Utkarsh Sharma
TL;DR
SUMMARY So, you are all ready to migrate to the cloud! Some of the readers may be looking for the blog on the decision-making process and pro & cons of moving to the cloud and which cloud best suits our needs. A simple search on the internet will throw up a multitude of articles and checklists of that process and comparison charts for various cloud infrastructure providers. This blog is a high-level outline of Day 0 — how do I start the migration, what should I have in place to ensure a smooth and successful migration to the cloud. The Tailor’s Rule It is essential to know, check and recheck all that is required and ensure they are in readiness prior to the actual migration process. This includes knowing what all is required before, during and after the migration — infrastructure, people, access, etc. Strategy and Roadmap A well-defined strategy and roadmap are key to preparing the team and all resources needed, including endless cups of coffee and doughnuts, to initiate and execute the process. Key Elements Of The Migration Roadmap The following are few of the essential resources while preparing for the migration process: Discovery The existing IT setup plays a key role in architecture and deployment decisions. An in-depth due diligence and discovery process is required to understand the current environment and how it is deployed — including network, infrastructure, application, database discoveries. A due diligence report containing these key details is important for the post migration verification to ensure that all workloads are migrated successfully. Network Designing Networking is a baseline requirement to host the infrastructure. A virtual network is a must have for any application deployment on cloud. You should ensure that the IP CIDR range is not overlapping with your on-premise network. The network design includes both the proposed cloud footprint on the cloud and the connectivity to the cloud. Architecture Setup It is important to know what the proposed infrastructure will look like — the workloads that will be migrated and what is deployed where. Architecture planning is required to plan the underlying infrastructure resources, the future network demands and integration requirements. Security Posture Security planning is a high priority during migration planning. The migration plan should include the security best practices — cloud, data, infrastructure and application security. The primary cloud infrastructure providers — AWS, Azure and GCP — have native support for the security tools. They are compliant with most regulations and industry best practices, letting us focus on our data and application security. Technology Decisions The right migration tools and technology stack to be used paves the way for a smooth migration process. The migration teams should have a clear understanding of what tool will be used during the migration process, including CI/CD, Configuration management, IAC, alerting and monitoring etc. During And Post Migration Preparation The following 3 components of migration preparation address what you should take care of during and after the migration process: Migration Checklist The migration checklist is the sequential order of execution of steps during the migration activity including network setup, DNS configuration, load balancers deployment, data replication, and automation. This checklist helps the team ensure that they have not missed any item like updating the DNS records after everything is done. Cutover Strategies Planning the cutover strategy is the important last mile in the migration journey:
Post Migration Optimisation Planning Once the migration is done and the application is running on the cloud, it’s important to plan the optimisation through a security, cost and compliance audit. This also includes if any upgrades are required in any stack if it was pure lift and shift or transforming to cloud native services. |
AuthorUtkarsh Sharma Archives
October 2023
Categories |