Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Cloud Migration
The importance of the virtual management of resources was emphasized in recent times, much more than ever. With organizations adapting to remote work, the limitations of physical infrastructure have been strongly highlighted. Cloud migration has thus become a necessity for a lot of organizations.
In this article, we cover the basics of cloud migration to give you a good idea of what it is and why you may need to carry out cloud migration.
What is cloud migration?
Cloud migration is the transfer of data, workloads, and processes from a physical infrastructure to a cloud infrastructure. It could also mean the transfer of resources from one cloud platform to another or from the cloud infrastructure to on-premises infrastructure.
Cloud services and deployment models
Cloud services and models differ and influence their suitability for different cases. Before carrying out cloud migration, it is important to understand the available cloud services and deployment models.
The basic cloud services models are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS).
- IaaS: This service model covers the migration of the whole or parts of physical infrastructure to the cloud.
- PaaS: With this service model, a cloud-based framework is deployed for developers to either experiment or build applications.
- SaaS: SaaS service providers offer cloud-based applications available to end-users with a connection to the Internet.
The cloud deployment models are the public cloud, the private cloud, and the hybrid cloud.
- Public cloud: Multiple organizations can share a public cloud and get server access without disruptions. This is the most popular deployment option and is a preferred option for a lot of organizations.
- Private cloud: The private cloud is dedicated to a single user. These clouds usually have data centers, which could be available on-site or off-site.
- Hybrid cloud: This deployment model combines on-premises hosting with cloud hosting. Organizations apply hybrid cloud to get an experience tailored to their needs. Sensitive resources could be kept on-premises, for example. Non-sensitive resources are kept in the cloud.
Benefits of cloud migration
The benefits of cloud migration stem from the fact that organizations no longer have to depend on on-premises infrastructure fully.
Cost optimization is a major benefit of cloud migration. It is due to the reduced costs of maintaining the infrastructure. Cloud migration improves an organization's agility, which is directly related to the competitive advantage of the organization. Organizations also get increased ROIs and are better adapted for scalability with cloud migration.
Cloud migration strategy
Cloud migration strategy differs and depends on factors such as the existing systems and processes. The strategies of cloud migration are rehost, refactor, revise, rebuild, and replace, the five R's.
- Rehost: Simply involves moving resources from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud.
- Refactor: This strategy includes migration as well as optimization of legacy structure and adoption of PaaS.
- Revise: Existing infrastructure is modified before the cloud migration.
- Rebuild: This involves rebuilding existing infrastructure from scratch before the migration.
- Replace: Existing applications are discarded and replaced with SaaS applications.
Having covered most of the basics, we are sure you are now better informed about cloud migration.
