How to Ensure a Successful Cloud Migration

23 Jun How to Ensure a Successful Cloud Migration

In this article, we’re going to go over the three main stages of cloud migration and how you can easily set out with a solid and successful cloud migration plan. With this, you’ll have every step you need to be able to ensure that your cloud migration strategy pans out as successfully as possible.

Stage 1: Planning a Cloud Migration

Assessing readiness

The first thing you need to do is assess your business’s cloud readiness. A Cloud Readiness Assessment will ensure that your business is fit and ready to take the step and move over to the cloud, evaluating your preparedness and making sure you’re not making the move too early on:

There are a few things to assess to ensure that you are ready:

• IT Infrastructure: Failing to have a good enough IT infrastructure will make your cloud implementation weak and brittle. Aspects such as network, storage, and hardware are vital for a stable cloud implementation, and so making sure these are up to scratch is vital.
• Security and Compliance: Security and compliance are vital for moving to the cloud, due to moving away from physical hardware and to virtual hardware, as a weak security strategy can lead to vulnerability post-migration. Compliance regulations around the cloud are also stringent and need to be followed, or you’ll risk huge repercussions.
• Scalability: Your ability to scale and your current performance are vital to making sure that you can accommodate more growth, and you’re flexible to the changes that a cloud-based environment will bring.

Microsoft Azure has a tool called the Strategic Migration Assessment and Readiness Tool (SMART), which is built to test your cloud migration readiness and help you work out if you’re prepared enough to start the migration process.

Choosing the right Cloud Migration approach

After you’ve assessed your business’s readiness, you need to choose the migration approach that will best suit your business. You’ll need to consider multiple things, such as your readiness assessment results and your business goals moving forward.

The different available strategies, known as the ‘6 Rs’, are all effective in their own ways and depend on the needs of your business:

• Rehost: The most straightforward strategy, also known as ‘lift and shift’. With this, you’ll move your applications and data to the cloud with minimal changes.
• Replatform: Replatforming is making some modifications to your applications to make them better for your cloud implementation, without a complete overhaul.
• Re-architect: Re-architecting is modifying your existing systems to fully exploit the advantages of the cloud.
• Repurchase: Repurchasing is moving to a different product or service that is cloud-based, to replace a non-cloud-based application or service.
• Retire: Retiring is ending or getting rid of a service or asset that is no longer necessary and is used for decluttering your IT environment during the migration process.
• Retain: Retaining is keeping certain applications and workloads on-premises instead of moving them to the cloud.

Azure’s SMART tool can also help with this, helping you work out the best strategy for different aspects of your organisation.

Identifying risks and requirements

After this, you’ll need to identify and assess the risks and requirements that come with cloud migration. This includes things like data loss, downtime, business continuity, and anything else that may disrupt or damage your business.

You’ll need to make sure you have a plan for each scenario, with clear action steps to make sure that all key stakeholders are on the same page.

Stage 2: Implementation an Cloud Migration

Migrating workloads and data

This is the process of moving to the cloud. It means taking workloads offline and then moving them over to the cloud, redeploying them after all necessary changes and configurations are completed.

Azure Migrate helps you easily complete this, as it works seamlessly with the Azure network and helps you safely migrate your data into an Azure implementation.

Minimising downtime

Downtime is inevitable when moving your whole cloud infrastructure over. But, it can be minimised as much as possible by using a phased migration plan, to move workloads in stages rather than all at once.

This will let certain parts of your organisation stay up and running while others are down, eliminating total disruption.

Testing and validating performance

Once you’ve finished migrating, it’s vital to ensure that you test everything and make sure your implementation is performing as expected. Making sure that everything works within the cloud and that there are no errors or difficulties will ensure you hit the ground running.

There are a host of tools built into Azure to help you test different parts of your cloud implementation, letting you ensure that everything is as expected.

Stage 3: Ongoing Management after an Cloud Migration

Monitoring and optimisation

Once you’re set with your cloud implementation, making sure to monitor and optimise as time goes on is vital to make sure that you’re always aware and adjusting based on your company’s needs.

Tracking key performance indicators and identifying issues that surface will ensure that you’re always aware of any problems, so you can easily step in and mitigate the problem.

Cost control and governance

If not used correctly, the cloud can get incredibly costly over time. Methods like right-sizing and scaling based on costs and needs will ensure that you’re never spending more than you need to.

Making use of the built-in Azure cost manager will help you save costs all around, as it’ll automatically scale your cloud resources based on your needs. On top of this, taking advantage of features such as reserved instances will help you save overall.

Security and compliance management

Making sure that you consider your security is vital, as failing to do so will result in gaps in your security posture, leaving you open to breaches and attacks in the long term. A good security strategy and solid monitoring will help ensure that your security is tight.

Compliance is also a top consideration, as failing to consider compliance regulations will result in hefty fines, consequences, and sometimes even litigation.

How We Can Help with an Cloud Migration

Migrating to the cloud is a smart move for any business, but it’s a process that takes a lot of preparation to do correctly. By following these steps and stages, you’ll be able to ensure that your cloud migration strategy is solid, so you can hit the ground running once you’ve moved your business to the cloud.

If you’re looking to get started with Azure or the cloud and need a helping hand, reach out to us today. We’re here to make sure that your business thrives, and we will help you migrate to the cloud every step of the way.

Contact us now and see how we can help.