Moving to the Cloud, as easy as 1, 2, 3 … 4, 5, 6

Moving to the cloud takes you out of the data center business and enables you to focus your company’s efforts on what it does best. Cloud providers have a massive advantage over in-house and on-premises solutions in that they are backed by millions of dollars of research and development, as well as an international network of hardware dedicated to providing the best possible IT solution for their clients.

Cloud Migration Consideration

When you’re considering a cloud migration, you’re likely considering moving virtual machines (VMs), some of which may be quite old, some not very well documented, and some very large. Moving these systems without breaking any essential applications may seem near impossible. It will require some knowledge of the applications in question to classify those apps before setting your migration plan.

Creating a comprehensive strategy is the first step to a successful cloud migration. Planning ahead will put your organization in a better position to more efficiently carry out your migration strategy, and prevent costly setbacks during throughout the process.

Amazon Web Services Strategy

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has a fantastic white paper about this. They break the process into 6 phases as shown below. Although this paper is from AWS, the strategy is universal and can be applied to a cloud migration of any provider like AWS, Azure, GCP, IBM, etc.

Cloud Assessment

• Financial Assessment (TCO Calculation)
• Security and Compliance Assessment
• Technical Assessment (Classify application types)
• Identify the tools that can be reused and the tools that need to be built
• Migrate licensed products
• Create a plan and measure success

Proof of Concept

• Get your feet wet with the cloud provider you have chosen
• Build a pilot and validate the technology
• Test existing software in the cloud

Moving Your Data

• Understand different storage option in your cloud provider (block, object, etc.)
• Migrate fileservers to Object Storage (AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, etc.)
• Migrate commercial databases to DB as a service where applicable

Moving Your Apps

• Forklift migration strategy
• Hybrid migration strategy
• Build “cloud aware” layers of code as needed
• Create images in the cloud for each component

Leveraging the Cloud

• Leverage other services offered by the cloud provider
• Automate elasticity and SDLC
• Harden security
• Create dashboards to make management easier
• Leverage multiple geographic regions and other HA options the provider offers

Optimization

• Optimize usage based on demand
• Improve efficiency
• Implement advanced monitoring and telemetry
• Re-engineer your application
• Decompose your relational databases

CCSI has the expertise on staff and the service offering to provide any or all of the services above to assist you in your migration to the cloud. We are a certified Microsoft and AWS Cloud Partner. Contact us for more information or to receive a free cloud migration assessment.

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Author Bio: Joe Goldberg is the Senior Cloud Program manager at CCSI. Over the past 15+ years, Joe has helped companies to design, build out, and optimize their network and data center infrastructure. As a result of his efforts, major gains in ROI have been realized through virtualization, WAN implementation, core network redesigns, and the adoption of cloud services. Joe is also ITIL certified.