Cloud Migration
Cloud migration is the process of moving workloads, data, and infrastructure from on-premises environments to cloud platforms. It covers assessment, strategy selection, execution, validation, and the organizational changes needed to operate successfully after the move.
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Intro
Cloud Migration
Cloud migration moves a workload from its current environment to a cloud environment. The workload includes the application, data, infrastructure, dependencies, and operating practices that deliver a business outcome.
That definition is wider than copying servers. A server can arrive in the cloud while its identity, network, monitoring, recovery, or support model remains unfinished. The move succeeds only when the workload works at the target and the team can operate it there.
Migration is also a selection process. You might move a workload with few changes, change its platform, replace it, redesign it, keep it where it is, or retire it. The right outcome can be no migration at all.
Start with the reason
Define the business outcome before choosing a migration tool or cloud service. Common drivers include leaving a data center, reducing hardware work, improving recovery, reaching new locations, changing cost structure, or accelerating delivery.
Turn the driver into measurable acceptance criteria. Examples include:
- A deadline for leaving a facility
- Maximum allowed outage during cutover
- Required transaction latency or throughput
- Recovery time and recovery point objectives
- Security and compliance controls
- A cost range measured over a stated period
- Operational readiness and ownership
A migration is not successful because a resource exists at the target. Success means the workload meets agreed business, technical, security, and operating criteria.
Discover the real workload
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Sources
- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/strategy-migration/overview.html
Supports
- Assess, mobilize, and migrate as high-level migration phases
- Readiness, discovery, business-case, and total-cost assessment
- Organizational perspectives across business, people, governance, platform, security, and operations
- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/large-migration-guide/migration-strategies.html
Supports
- Seven migration strategies and their definitions
- Workload-specific reasons to retire, retain, rehost, relocate, repurchase, replatform, or refactor
- Higher complexity of refactoring during a large migration
- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/application-portfolio-assessment-guide/wave-planning.html
Supports
- Waves as manageable migration groups
- Dependency groups, portfolio assessment, target design, and strategy as wave inputs
- Design, cutover planning, premigration, cutover, stabilization, and closure activities
- Runbook rehearsal, operational readiness, and lessons applied to later waves
- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/large-migration-portfolio-playbook/wave-planning.html
Supports
- Small, lower-complexity early waves
- Dependency-based move groups
- Ongoing wave planning and gradual introduction of complexity
- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/best-practices-migration-cutover/cutover-stage.html
Supports
- Ingestion freeze, backup, final synchronization, routing change, and validation sequence
- Functional, nonfunctional, and operational-readiness testing
- Predefined rollback checkpoints and decision ownership
- Additional data handling required after target-side writes
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/migrate/plan-migration
Supports
- Migration plan scope, readiness, sequencing, and dependency mapping
- Workload grouping and prioritization into migration waves
- Planned-outage and near-zero-downtime migration choices
- Rollback criteria, procedure, authority, and stakeholder acceptance
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/migrate/execute-migration
Supports
- Change freeze and repeatable target deployment
- Data movement, integrity validation, traffic redirection, and target testing
- Production migration execution with planned downtime
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/migrate/optimize-workloads-after-migration
Supports
- Post-cutover security, cost, performance, reliability, and operational reviews
- Ongoing review of hybrid dependencies
- Outcome reporting and source-workload decommission as later work
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/architecture/migration-to-gcp-getting-started
Supports
- Migration from on-premises, hosting, or another cloud environment
- Assess, plan, deploy, and optimize migration path
- Inventory, dependencies, requirements, baselines, foundation design, and prioritized strategy
- Optimization after workload deployment
- https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/144/final
Supports
- Governance, compliance, trust, architecture, identity, data protection, availability, and incident-response considerations
- Security and privacy assessment before moving systems to public cloud
- Continued consumer responsibility when using public-cloud services