Migrating to the Cloud

With technology being mainstreamed in personal as well as business space, it is reshaping both our personal lives and enterprises to a great extent. In fact, technology, forming alliances with evolving digital transformation, has been an inclusion into the business world that has completely changed and molded how people do business. And this results in enterprises adopting several digital transformation trends that could work in their favor to achieve broader scalability and enhance business operations. Though companies have so many tech trends to follow suit for, a few have gained traction among the majority till now and appear to continue to take the cake in the forthcoming years as well.

If we look at the current tech trends enticing the brands much more than anything else in the marketplace, it should definitely be strategies for cloud migration. Besides, cloud-based solutions are also evidence to be advantageous for many businesses, aiding them to reinvent complex business processes, streamline core operational areas, improve agility, reduce barriers, etc. Since there are so many aspects to look into the cloud trend, cloud migration projects and related service is something that might be completely alien to many. This is why most businesses are oblivious to adopting strategies for cloud migration.

Migrating resources, digital assets, and services to the cloud is difficult. Cloud migration involves a complete transition and a well-crafted plan. Moreover, the advancement of technology is leading brands to employ the latest cloud migration tools that streamline the migration process to the fullest extent.

Migrating to the cloud provides organizations access to a range of IT resources and services without the burden of owning and maintaining the underlying infrastructure. Cloud-native services provide a powerful and flexible infrastructure that can help organizations to modernize their applications, improve scalability, and reduce operational costs.

Cloud-native services refer to applications and services that are built, deployed, and run on the Cloud. These services are designed to take advantage of the features and capabilities offered by the Cloud, such as scalability, high availability, and elasticity.

Being?cloud-native?is often considered crucial for business success in the current business landscape. However, the perception of becoming “cloud-native” as a drastic change for a business might not necessarily be accurate.

Strategies and approaches for cloud migration include the 6-Rs approach, which involves rehosting, re-platforming, repurchasing, refactoring, retaining, or retiring services. The typical cloud migration project methodology involves several key stages: discovery, assessment, migration, and state running.

6-Rs” approach to Cloud Migration

? Rehost (Lift and shift): virtualize and move services “as is” to the Cloud. They are usually used for proprietary application services like web or on-premise applications.

? Re-platform: move on-prem services “as is” to the Cloud using cloud-native alternatives—e.g., cloud-managed databases. It can also include moving to PaaS services.

? Repurchase: move services (where available) to a SaaS offering.

? Refactor: partially or fully redesign the service architecture best to use cloud-native services, e.g., microservices.

? Retain: keep some services—usually legacy or highly custom backends—where they are.

? Retire: replace existing services with cloud-native services as possible.

Typical Cloud Migration Project Methodology

Throughout the entire project, it is essential to continuously monitor and manage the cloud environment to ensure that it remains secure, cost-effective, and aligned with the business objectives. This may involve ongoing maintenance and support, as well as periodic optimization and updates to the infrastructure and applications. The typical methodology for a cloud migration involves several key stages, including:

Discovery

It defines the business and technical case/scope, plus assets to migrate.

? Scope of migration

? Business due diligence

? Technical due diligence

? Asset and Discovery

Assessment

Assessment is used to plan the migration and see potential methods of execution.

? Business Assessment

? Technical Assessment and PoC(s)

? Migration and backlog and MVP

? Migration Planning and Approval

Migration

Migration is used to run the planned migration steps, both technical and organizational.

? Technical Migration

? Organization Migration (Processes and Structures)

? Stabilization

? Prep handover to SRE/OPs

State Running

Designated run team maintenance going forward.

? SRE/DevOps team(s) manage as appropriate

Services and features that typically get migrated

? DATA: Static, SQL, NoSQL, File-stores

? NETWORK: Topology, VNETS, Subnets, LB4/7, Firewalls, VPNs, Routers, Connectivity, etc.

? COMPUTE: Applications and servers.

? DEVOPS: Build, Test, and Deployment processes.

? SECURITY: WAFs, Security groups, isolation, peering, secrets, keys, certificates, monitoring, etc.

? BUDGET: Controls and Monitoring

? OBSERVABILITY and SRE: Monitoring, Logging, Tracing, Alerts, Incident Management, Patching, etc.

? IAM: Users, Roles, Groups, Privileges, AD/LDAP, etc.

? CONTROL: Management and Oversight.

Migration Use Cases—Technical Scenarios

Migration use cases are specific scenarios or situations where businesses may need to migrate their IT infrastructure and services to the cloud. These use cases can vary depending on the type of business and the current state of their IT infrastructure. Various use cases can drive cloud migration and technical scenarios, including?data, infrastructure, and applications.

Data Migration

? Static Data: BLOB (Binary Large OBject or?basic large object); migrate using online transfer such as UPLOAD, RSYNCH (remote sync) methods; offline methods like transfer appliances or archival media; depending on size.)

? File Data: Files and Directory data; migrate using online transfer such as SMD (Signed Mark Data), UPLOAD, RSYNCH); offline methods like transfer appliances or archival media; depending on size.

(No)SQL Data: Database data; export and import; instance “synching’”; ETL methods; migration utilities; database file transfer; virtualization lift and shift.

Infrastructure

It is usually the most manually intensive, requiring mapping physical infrastructure and topology to cloud provider-specific IaaS. A typical approach might be the compute service migration. It deals with migrating application servers, applications, and server clusters to the cloud. It is not just about migrating infrastructure but can also be about refactoring service architectures for the cloud as well. Common approaches are:

? Rehost: Lift and shift approach used to mirror existing servers “as-is” to the cloud; virtualize on-premise host and upload images to the cloud; create instance groups from those cloud image(s), can also use on-prem migration utilities from some cloud providers to guide the process; easiest to do but does not take full advantage of cloud architecture.

? Re-platform: Migrate services to similar cloud-native technologies; application services like web servers, web APIs, and REST applications can be dockerized and hosted on container engines like Kubernetes. Deployed directly onto cloud-managed application sandboxes; application binary is not refactored; it is just deployed “as-is” to a cloud-managed service.

? Refactor: Refactoring is about refactoring application architecture to fit the best available cloud services; this is highly dependent on architecture but would most likely include things like:

• Decomposition of application logic into appropriate microservices or macro services;
• Dockerize and deploy to container services like Kubernetes;
• Using native messaging and event services to provide inter-service communication.

Containerization and Kubernetes

Docker and Kubernetes are two critical technologies everyone needs to know the benefit of migrating applications to the cloud.

Containerization

? It is the process of building a very lightweight, self-contained image that has all the OS, middleware, and deployed application binaries dependencies baked in.

? Images, once built, can be deployed on any Docker-supporting OS (which most do) and run “as-is.”

? Unlike VMware-type images, they are very small and easily scale on any OS.

? They are key to many cloud-native technologies but are portable to any of them.

Kubernetes

? It is a “container orchestrator” platform that is an “all-in-one” technology for managing the deployment, monitoring, scaling, security, load-balancing, health, and inter-service communication of any containers deployed to it.

? It is one of the most common de facto standards for properly using Cloud benefits—like scalability, managed services, and cost.

Business Impacts

Like any organizational change, potential impacts need to be considered.

Positive

? Cheaper Costs: Customers only pay for what they use (metered service).

? Managed Services: Patching, upgrades, availability, etc., of services, are managed for customers.

? Elasticity: Services can scale automatically based on demand.

? SRE: Supporting technologies like monitoring, tracing, DRaaS, etc., are provided for customers and can be more closely integrated out of the box.

? Control: Customers can choose the level of control that they want using IaaS and PaaS.

? Empowerment: Teams can potentially own their services all the way into production.

?? These impacts depend on the adopted approach and the migrated or transformed applications' architecture.

Negative

? Reskilling: Organizational reskilling is required for IT functions.

? Control: There is some loss of control over environments.

? Processes: Business practices and structures may have to change or adapt to better support the Cloud (DevOps and Ops/SRE).

? Refactoring: Applications and services may need to be refactored to better use “modern” architectural patterns.

? SRE: Existing solutions for monitoring and recovery may need to be replaced as well, as the increasing cost.

? Downtime: Downtime for the migration might be an issue.

Very Important and Strategic

When looking at cloud migration, it is essential to remember the following points and the mental maturity model.

? Only migrate what makes sense.

? Hybrid cloud approaches allow the “best of both worlds.”

? Migration can be done incrementally.

? Refactoring of services can be done gradually.

? Many services can be transferred “as-is.”

? Migration tools do exist to help with the process.

From the InfoQ article "Migrating to the Cloud: Is It as Intimidating as It Appears?" and the Appventurez article: "Moving Towards the Cloud: An Introduction to Cloud Migration Strategies."

https://www.appventurez.com/blog/strategies-for-cloud-migration