The cloud migration project It consists of a plan of migration solutions adapted to the needs of companies. This includes needs like downsizing or moving out of on-premises data centers, migrating existing workloads, modernizing apps, or leaving another cloud for another provider.
The cloud migration and transformation services are a standard, repeatable approach with industry-leading migrations and application-specific tools that help customers optimize architectural design, planning, security, administration, and capabilities while transforming their workloads in the cloud.
Determination of the cloud delivery method begins at the evaluation phase and often remains in the planning phase. In any exercise of cloud migration, there are six options for migration, often collectively referred to as the 6R framework.
Recompra («Drop and Shop»)
This strategy involves dismantling the application and replacing it with a cloud-based version, which typically replaces legacy applications with SaaS. A small window is required for the transition or migration.
Rehost («Lift and Shift»)
This strategy involves migrating applications from on-premises to the cloud without any changes. It is typically used for large-scale migration of legacy applications to achieve specific business or operational goals, such as faster process execution time. The best place to lift and change migration is to identify applications that can use cloud computing without making architecture changes. For example, applications with variable or seasonal loads can use the cloud without modification in most cases. The cloud can make it easy to scale application tiers as needed, for example by adding web servers or database instances to a cluster.
Replataforma («Lift and Shift»)
The platform upgrade strategy involves moving applications near-as-is and replacing some components where possible to take advantage of the cloud. In many cases, this means moving from traditional hosted infrastructure to managed services. Another common optimization is moving from commercial software (such as monitoring, patching, and configuration management tools) to open source software. This allows you to scale freely in the cloud without worrying about license costs for each additional instance.
refactoring
This strategy requires a complete update of the application to adapt it to the cloud. This is valuable when a business has a strong need for cloud-based features, such as improving development flexibility, scalability, or performance. In many cases, refactoring involves breaking the application into separate services and moving to a microservices architecture.
hybrid
Many organizations keep some of their resources in the local hub and move only some of them to the cloud, creating a hybrid cloud. Hybrid cloud benefits include maximizing the value of existing equipment in the on-premises data center, as well as the ability of organizations in certain industries to meet regulatory compliance requirements. Hybrid clouds are also useful for cloud-to-cloud backup (disaster recovery), where on-premises data is backed up to the public cloud as a disaster recovery option if the on-premises data center fails, in case the local data center becomes inoperable, as can happen in the event of fire, flood, or crime.
1. What is cloud migration?
The cloud migration es el movimiento de aplicaciones y datos desde una ubicación, a menudo desde los servidores privados locales de una empresa («en las instalaciones») a los servidores de un proveedor de servicios de nube pública, así como entre diferentes nubes. Los beneficios más importantes de carry out a cloud migration project and switch to such a service are: the reducing IT costs and improving efficiency, as well as information security, ease of use among other benefits.
1.1 Main benefits of migrating to the cloud
Scalability: Cloud computing can be scaled to support larger workloads and larger numbers of users more easily than on-premises infrastructure, which typically requires businesses to purchase and configure additional physical servers, network equipment, or software licenses.
Cost: Businesses that move to the cloud often dramatically reduce the cost of IT operations as cloud service providers take care of maintenance and updates. Instead of focusing on keeping things up to date and operational, companies can direct more resources to their core business developing new products or improving existing ones.
Functioning: For some companies, moving to the cloud can improve performance and the overall customer experience. If your app or website is hosted in cloud service centers instead of multiple on-premises servers, data doesn't have to travel as far to reach users and latency is reduced.
Flexibility: Users, whether employees or customers, can access the services and data they need from any cloud. In this way, it is easier for the company to expand into new areas, offer its services to an international audience and give employees flexibility in their work.
Backup, recovery and failover: Most cloud providers offer built-in, one-click capabilities for backup recovery, including the ability to store backups in different geographic regions.
Enhanced Security: Public clouds make it easy to protect data and applications by providing built-in security at the platform level, in addition to a variety of specialized security tools. In many cases, the cloud service provider automatically handles security patching.
Simplified Administration and Monitoring: If the cloud provider offers a central management tool, it's easy to manage and monitor cloud and data center resources from a single screen.
2. Types of cloud servers
A cloud server It is a form of data hosting that works on a virtual network. These servers offer the same functions of a physical server, but They improve fundamental aspects such as transmission power or storage capacity and security.
2.1 How cloud servers work
The cloud performance It can be described simply: a company extracts resources from a hardware system and makes them available to users in a virtual way.
In technical terms, the operation of the cloud server comprises two platforms:
- Front end: refers to hardware: computer or smart device; as well as software: applications, interface or program, which a user requires to access the cloud.
- Back end: It refers to the architecture and infrastructure of the servers in the cloud, as well as the company that manages the service.
2.2 Cloud server models
exist three service models Providers offer:
Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas): the vendor provides the hardware system (underlying physical infrastructure), but the companies manage the virtualization (software, applications, etc.)
Platform as a Service (Paas): the service provider offers provides the computing platform, networks, servers, and storage so that customers can focus on building applications or services.
Software as a Service (Saas): The providers not only provide the physical base (own or contracted), but also manage the maintenance, operation and distribution of the software (applications and programs in the cloud) to which users access from the network.
2.3 Types of cloud servers
According to the combination of the elements of architecture, we mention four types of cloud servers:
Public: the available resources are shared, in some cases free (although conditioned) and are owned by the service provider, who is also in charge of their management.
Private: in this case, the client acquires for exclusive use a certain amount of resources available (privately owned and managed) by the service provider. It is a custom cloud. In other cases, the company acquires its own servers to create and manage the cloud for the use of the organization itself.
Hybrid: This type of server combines private (own or third-party) and public cloud resources, allowing organizations to migrate data and workloads according to technology and information needs.
multicloud: This architecture takes advantage of different public cloud services, allowing the use of resources according to the company's requirements. It generally requires applications that allow management of the different clouds.
3. What is the reason why companies migrate to the cloud?
The cloud migration it enables businesses to respond to growth and change by scaling up or down infrastructure resources as needed without losing stability.
3.1 The benefits of migrating to the cloud include:
Higher agility and flexibility
Capacity for innovate faster
relief of rising resource demand
Better management of the increase in customer expectations
Costs reduction
deliver results immediate business
Simplify IT
Switch to everything as a service
Better consumption management
Cloud scalability
improved performance
improve the response times to support requests
business continuity
promote the innovation
Outsource functions
progress tracking
4. How to organize the cloud migration project?
Each company has different needs and, therefore, the cloud migration project it is slightly different. Cloud service providers can help companies set up their migration process. Most cloud migrations involve the following basic steps:
- To establish objectives: What operational improvements does the company expect? When does legacy infrastructure become obsolete? Setting measurable goals helps the company determine if the transition went well or not
- Create a security strategy: Cybersecurity in the cloud requires a different approach than on-premises security. In the cloud, corporate assets are no longer behind a firewall and the network perimeter is almost non-existent. It may be necessary to deploy a cloud firewall or web application firewall.
- Copy data constantly: Choose a cloud service provider and copy existing databases. This must be done continuously during the migration process so that the cloud database stays up to date.
- Transfer business intelligence: this could involve refactoring or rewriting code. It can be done little by little or all at once.
- Shift production from on-premises to the cloud: the cloud is activated. The migration is complete.
Some companies turn off their on-premises infrastructure at the end of these steps, while others may keep legacy systems in place as a standby, sort of a disaster recovery, or as part of a hybrid cloud deployment.
5. Phases to migrate a project to the cloud.
There are different technical processes and recommended procedures for the cloud migration project for different workloads and for creating different cloud configurations, but all cloud migrations follow the same six basic phases:
Define the strategy
Define the business case for the migration and the expected results.
Plan
Align your cloud migration plan with your desired business outcomes.
Get prepared
Prepare your on-premises and cloud environments for migration
migrate
Move workloads to the cloud environment.
Government
Use benchmarks and implement cost and security governance best practices for your cloud environment and your workloads.
Manage
Use proven methodologies for ongoing management of the cloud solution.
