3 Steps That Make Cloud Migration Easy

We generate tons of data every day. We send and receive this data to various people and institutions multiple times as well.

Now, when so much is happening, cloud migration makes sense. Right?

But first, here’s what cloud migration really means:

“When data related to a business, its applications, and all its components are stored on the cloud or moved from one cloud service to another on the basis of the business’s infrastructure, it is known as Cloud Migration.”

The reason most people today would opt to become a member of the cloud community is:

• To Develop A Briskly Moving Business
• It has Minimal Operating Costs
• It Provides A Flexible Set of Services

Have you been thinking of migrating to cloud or considering cloud migration but are not sure how? Well, read along to find out the process for successful cloud migration.

The migration process can be divided into 3 main stages. Along with that, there are multiple sub-stages, which will also be covered here.

This is where you start focusing on what you’re reading.

Stage 1: Before You Migrate

1. Determining Your Purpose:

Ask yourself these questions to establish the reason you want to go ahead with the cloud migration.

1. Is my business growing at a rapid pace? Does my site lag due to the high traffic?
2. Have I invested more than enough on my local hardware? Do I need a cloud to get me more benefits for my business?

To answer the first question, if you said yes to both the questions then you should go ahead and invest in a Private or a Public cloud.

While for the second question, if you do need a cloud that will give your business significant benefits, you should invest in a Hybrid cloud.

2. Train Your Staff:

Sure, you need to improve the services that your IT department takes care of. While doing that, you need to remember that your staff is going to be using the IT services and if they don’t understand how they are supposed to work with it, there will be chaos.

Appropriately trained staff members would mean a knowledgeable group of personnel. Factors such as fear, uncertainty, and doubt (generally known as FUD) that may surround your team will disappear.

3. Get Yourself the Right Partner:

Nobody wants a complicated cloud migration. You already know what qualities you want in your accomplice, still, here’s a list:

• Ask tons of questions to determine whether your partner is certified for the job. If they are, you can be sure that the transition will be smooth.
• Technical experience is a must for someone who will be assisting you in your journey.
• You want someone who can provide active services and a cloud structure that will best suit your business.

Sounds easy, right? Well, it could be with proper management.

4. Make Clear Goals:

In your mind, you might have certain objectives that you have defined for your business. These goals need to be put on paper, discussed with your team, and allocated to the employees at an early stage to avoid confusion.

Determining the number of cloud instances you want to incorporate in your business, who will have access to which system, and the amount of access for each of the employees, will go a long way in making the cloud migration successful.

Stage 2: While You Migrate

You would have to remember the below 5 Steps during the migration stage:

1. Create Outlines and Estimates:

• First of all, you want to build a financial statement which will regulate the investment you pour into the cloud system. Get quotes for things like server costs, network costs, and storage costs.
• Secondly, you better start understanding the security operations that will be added to the system to steer clear from risks and threats. Make sure your employees understand them as well.
• The third and final sub-section that needs to be remembered is that you will have to compute which applications and resources would have to the cloud first.

2. Find Tools that Can be Used:

Complications may arise when you start transferring the data from On premise set-up to Cloud.

But you don’t have to be worried. Today, there are various tools that are available in the market to make your move easy. With just a little research you can find these tools or for a simpler solution, you can contact your cloud migration service provider.

3. Your Preferred Storage:

There are multiple factors that will determine the type of storage your business needs. You can decide on a suitable option by assessing the following:

• Availability
• Cost
• Updates
• Consistency
• Durability
• Size of the Data
• Bandwidth available
• IOPS demand from your workloads

4. Figure Out the Migration Strategies:

While you’re going through the transfer you don’t want your business to be disrupted, correct? For that, there are two options that have been made available, namely:

• The Hybrid- For large-scale businesses, it would be nearly impossible to shift every piece of data at once. Applications are moved from physical storage to the cloud in parts, reducing the risk factors, considerably.
• The Forklift- Every inch and every piece of application and data is gathered and moved in one swift motion. Once this is done, you’ll be able to concentrate on the other important resources.

5. Migrating the Applications:

The following methods can be used to transfer your applications to cloud-

• Application Containerization
• Live Migration
• Virtual Machine Disk Conversion
• Host Cloning
• Data Migration

Stage 3: Once You’re Done Migrating

1. Keep Track and Make Changes:

To improve the efficiency with which you use the cloud, you will have to stay in the loop of understanding, overseeing, analyzing, and observing. An optimized cloud system will reduce management costs.

2. Use Cloud to your Advantage:

With the large amounts of investments you have made for the cloud migration, you want to be taking full advantage of it. Try exploring additional benefits that the cloud has to offer.

3. Get Useful Monitoring Tools:

There are various tools that are available to help you in the future and provide continuous guidance on how to efficiently use the cloud. You can pick the tool and the package that best suits your business needs. To make things a tad bit easier, here are some of the best monitoring tools available today:

• AWS Database Migration Service
• AppDynamics
• Azure Migration Tools

That’s it. As long as you follow these steps, your cloud migration can be carried forward smoothly. Form strategies and plans before moving forward, otherwise things could go wrong and you could be left with a partially working cloud.

The process of could migration is long and tedious. You can talk to our experts at GBB and let us help your business.

GBB is an end-to-end IT Infrastructure Solutions and Services Company that focuses on helping customers transform their businesses through innovative use of technology. By partnering with the best vendors in the respective practice/area of our focus, we ensure that our clients get the best service. We take great pride in saying that GBB has various technology partnerships with AWS, Azure & Netmagic.