A 10-Step Cloud Migration Checklist

The following items are included in the cloud migration checklist:

• Create the role of migration architect. 
• Select the level of cloud integration you want. 
• Choose between a single cloud and a multi-cloud strategy. 
• Create cloud KPIs. 
• Set performance benchmarks. 
• Components of migration should be prioritized. 
• Perform any refactoring that is required. 
• Make a data-migration strategy. 
• Replace the production line. 
• Examine the allocation of application resources. 

Before beginning your cloud migration, establish the migration architect role to lead the effort. The migration architect is a system architect-level position responsible for planning and completing all aspects of the migration; their core responsibility should include defining necessary refactoring required to make the migration successful, designing strategies for data migration, defining cloud-solution requirements, and determining migration priorities and production switchover mechanisms.

During a significant migration project, many decisions and technical plans must be made, and having a migration architect responsible for all aspects of the migration is critical to the project’s success.

Step 2: Decide on the level of cloud integration you want. 

It’s incredibly straightforward to adapt your application to run with a specific cloud provider. Your development teams will only have to learn one set of cloud APIs.

The disadvantage of this strategy is vendor lock-in. Moving your application to a different provider after you’ve changed it to function with only that one provider could take just as much effort as the original cloud migration. Furthermore, having a single cloud provider may limit your capacity to negotiate binding terms with the cloud provider, such as pricing and service level agreements (SLAs).

But hold on, things are about to get even more difficult. Using several cloud providers can be done in a variety of ways:

Distribute your software among several cloud providers. Some businesses prefer to operate parts of their applications on one cloud provider and the rest on another. This method allows you to take advantage of the primary benefits that each provider has to offer (for example, one provider might have better AI capabilities than another, which is known for its database speeds). The danger here is that the functioning of both suppliers is intertwined, and any issues with one could negatively affect the customer experience of the other.

Develop your software to be cloud-neutral. Other businesses create programs that can run on any cloud provider. You might run your application on numerous providers simultaneously or share the load between them using this method. This architecture affords you the most flexibility in vendor negotiations because you can change gears from one cloud provider to another. The disadvantage is that you may find it challenging to leverage each cloud provider’s leading capabilities, which reduces the benefits of hosting your application in the cloud. This technique may make your application development and validation processes more difficult.

Determine which KPIs are most essential to your organization in each area and which metrics will be most impacted by the cloud migration.

Step 5: Set performance benchmarks 

Baselining is the process of assessing your application’s or service’s existing (pre-migration) performance to determine whether its future (post-migration) performance is acceptable. Baselines assist you in deciding when your migration is complete, as well as confirming the projected post-migration performance improvements. You can also use baselines to diagnose any issues that develop during a cloud migration.

Establish a baseline statistic for each KPI you want to track. Decide how long you’ll gather data to establish a baseline. You can go quicker by choosing a short baseline time (a day), but you risk not collecting a meaningful performance sample. Selecting a more extended baseline period (such as a month) requires more time, resulting in more representative data.

You also must decide either you want to collect merely average or representative baseline data, or whether you want to incorporate data collected during “peak” or “critical” periods. 

Regardless of whatever data-collection approach is best for your company, make sure you identify what kind of data you’ll gather and for how long.
Determine which components should be migrated and in what order using the dependency diagram. It’s common practice, to begin with the services having the fewest dependencies. In this case, you’ll begin by moving your most internal services, then move on to your outermost services, typically the ones closest to your customers. Start with the services that are most important to your clients. Those that are the most external may manage any influence on your customers. 

Step 7: Perform any refactoring that is required. 

You may want to perform additional work on your applications and services before migrating them to the cloud to ensure that they function as effectively and efficiently as feasible. For instance, you might want to refactor your program as follows: 

• As a result, it may scale dynamically with a variable number of operating instances, potentially saving you money on cloud service fees. 
• As a result, rather than statically allocating resources ahead of time, you can use dynamic-cloud capabilities, including the ability to give and de-allocate resources as needed dynamically. 
• To migrate to a more service-oriented architecture before the migration, individual services may be moved to the cloud more simply.

Step 8: Make a data-migration strategy.
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Among the most challenging parts of a public cloud is data migration. The location of your data can significantly impact how fast your program runs. Performance can suffer when your data is moved to the cloud, but your data access methods are still predominantly on-premises. If the information is still on-premises, but the service that accesses it is in the cloud, the situation is the same.

Data migration options include:

• They are using a bi-directional synchronization technique between on-premises and cloud databases. Remove the on-premises database once all data consumers have moved to the cloud. 
• Allow users to connect solely to the on-premises version of an on-premises database with one-way synchronization to a cloud-based database. When you’re ready, turn off access to the on-premises version so that the cloud-based version may take over as the primary database and provide cloud-based users access to the new database.
• Make use of a cloud data-migration service, such as Amazon Web Services. 

Don’t undervalue the necessity and complexity of data migration planning. If you ignore your data transfer plan before starting a cloud migration, it may fail or at least fall short of expectations. Involve your migration architect early on in the data migration planning process.

Step 9: Make the switch from manual to automatic production.
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How do you migrate your production system from an on-premises solution to a cloud version? The complexity and design of your application and the architecture of your data and data stores will determine the response.

Two ways are commonly used:

• Do everything at once. Switch traffic from the on-premises stack to the cloud stack only after you’ve transferred the complete application or service to the cloud and verified that it works there. 
• Take it one step at a time. Move a few clients over, make sure everything is still working, and add a few more. Continue on in this fashion once all of your clients have been transferred to the cloud-based service.

Step 10: Examine the allocation of application resources.
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There are a few extra things to think about after you’ve done moving everything to the cloud. The most crucial aspect is resource optimization. When you allocate resources (servers, for example) statically in the cloud, you’re not taking advantage of the cloud’s strengths. Make sure your teams have a plan in place for allocating resources to your application as you transition to the cloud. When you need to give more resources to a cloud application, you can usually get them from the vendor in nearly any number at any time. This means providing your teams with the application architecture to support dynamic scaling. You can usually rely on that you can scale as needed to meet demand. 

Other factors to consider while migrating to the cloud

The ten steps in our successful cloud checklist cover much ground, but there are a few extra things to consider when you migrate to the cloud. Creating a safe and secure cloud environment, for instance, is a prominent aspect of any cloud migration. Fortunately, the major cloud providers provide extensive tooling and resources to assist you in developing and maintaining a secure system.

This means providing your teams with the application architecture to support dynamic scaling. You can usually rely on scaling as needed to meet demand.
When comparing apples to oranges, the cloud solution appears to be more expensive than the on-premises alternative.

Second, on-premises infrastructure costs are primarily made up of capital expenditures (CapEx), whereas cloud-based infrastructure costs are typically made up of running expenses (OpEx). CapEx may be easier to come by than OpEx, depending on how your company handles its books or vice versa. Understanding how to pay for cloud-based infrastructures differs from paying for on-premises infrastructures, and ensuring that your company’s financial models accommodate the differences is crucial to realizing cloud cost savings.