The Perfect Cloud Migration Plan

If you want to experience the perfect cloud migration, you'll need to put together a perfect cloud migration plan.

Sadly, in the real world, no migration is ever perfect. Even the most meticulously planned migrations will face challenges. Still, the better your plan, the better your chance of avoiding problems, and the better chance you'll be ready to deal with issues that do arise.

Your cloud migration plan will be different to everyone else's as it needs to be fully reflect your organisation's unqiue situation.

However, there are a few things everyone needs to consider as part of their migration planning. Read through the list below and use it as you make your own cloud migration plan.

1. Find Out What You Have

Before you move anything to the cloud, you first need to figure out which cloud(s) you're moving things to. Before you decide on that destination, you will likely need to get proposals and quotes. In order to get those quotes, potential suppliers will need to know roughly what they're quoting for. A good starting point for those estimates is likely to be what you have now.

Take a full inventory of the server-room based aspects of your IT systems. Record every virtual machine, server application, operating system, database, and required framework. Be sure to include information on any dependencies between systems.

Don't forget Virtual Machine specifications, DNS servers/entries, IP address assignments, internet breakout, WAN links, firewall rules, web filtering, email filtering, data storage systems, data backup systems, directory services, users, user groups and VPNs.

The more you know about your IT systems, the less likely you are to overlook items when drafting your cloud migration plan.

2. Understand What You Need

In step 1, you took an inventory of current IT capacity. Now it's time to figure out how much capacity you really need - now and in the near future.

What you need isn't necessarily the same as what you have now.

It's fairly common to over-provision capacity on on-premise systems, so as to provide room for future scalability. Adding RAM to an on-premises server is cheap. On the cloud, it's more expensive. The same goes for data storage. So, you need to think more carefully about what you actually need NOW.

Perhaps, when you look at the actual usage levels of your IT resources, you'll find you have excessive capacity in some areas and insufficient capacity in others.

By trimming this excessive capacity, you may be able to cut the ongoing cost of your new cloud without adversely impacting performance.

Any savings can help fund any increases in quotas required to tackle the performance bottlenecks you identify. This is different to just adding extra RAM 'just in case,' in that you're only adding extra resources where it's clear they really are needed - and can help tackle a performance bottleneck, quickly and easily.

Cloud providers (and/or their partners) can help you figure out what capacity you need. However, it's wise to do your own research first, so your meetings with potential suppliers can move beyond abstract discussions.

Estimating your future IT needs does involve guesswork, but the same would be true if you were planning on-site IT capacity. Most cloud providers are happy for you to upgrade later should your initial capacity estimates prove overly conservative. These upgrades tend to happen on high-capacity multi-tenanted platforms, so tend to be fairly quick and painless. Pricing tends to be incremental and usually, there's no need to change the solution design.

So your forecasts don't have to be right, merely good enough for the purposes of supplier selection, solution architecture and budgetary planning.

3. Pick a Partner

For a successful cloud migration, you don't just need a good cloud migration plan, you also need the right partner to support your migration. This support could be a cloud provider itself. In the case of the largest cloud providers, you will likely deal with one of the cloud provider's partners instead. Start conversations with possible candidates to see if they fit your needs. As you narrow down your shortlist of potential suppliers, you will want to request detailed proposals and cost estimates.

Potential providers/partners should provide technical specifications, service level agreements, hosting architecture diagrams, and details about provided monitoring, backup, and support. As you prepare to make your decision, have your organisation's legal team look over any T&Cs (terms and conditions). You will want to know right away if their terms are objectionable as then you can either negotiate amended terms with the provider or disqualify the provider if reasonable amendments aren't possible.

The largest cloud providers tend to offer services on a take-it-or-leave it basis, i.e. their terms are unlikely to be negotiable unless you're a giant multi-national. Smaller cloud providers are likely to be more flexible.

4. Ask About Everything

The perfect cloud migration plan includes a checklist of everything you need to clarify with potential cloud providers. For example, is monitoring included in the service? Are data backups included? How often do they happen? What support is included? What hours and days is it available? What sort of extra charges could you be liable for? How much does it cost to expand storage capacity, the number of VMs, RAM allocations, etc.? These questions will help you choose the right provider and avoid unwelcome surprises later.

5. Get Stakeholders on Board

The perfect cloud migration plan will be worthless if you can't get your migration project approved.

YOU may understand the benefits of moving to the cloud, but these benefits may not be as self-evident to your organisation's leadership team.

Therefore, you may need to advocate internally for cloud migration. You may need to highlight the high opportunity cost of continuing to host certain systems in-house, and explain the difficulties of replicating cloud providers' levels of scalabilty/reliability on-premise without spending a fortune.

6. Declutter

It is best to spend a bit of time tidying up your systems before you migrate them, to reduce costs and complexity. Do a review of the data you store and back up, looking for files that are no longer needed. Look for excessive duplicates, non-work-related file extensions, and old files no longer required for compliance/legal/accounting purposes. While tidying up, consider clearing out any unused VMs, server applications, databases and DNS entries.

7. Write a Detailed Plan

There are a lot of steps that go into a cloud migration plan. Make sure you have a detailed, written work plan. Include the order in which things need to be migrated to the cloud and the relative timings for moving each workload or subset of users.

Business-critical systems will need to be handled with the most care and moved over at a time which is least disruptive to everyday operations and existing business processes.

You also need to take interdependency into consideration. Some systems need to be moved simultaneously with others, or at least, shortly afterwards.

The complexity and scale of systems also needs to be considered. You don't want to bite off too much at a time.

Your IT team has to be able to handle the volume of work required to prepare for the migration. It also has to be able to support any users that need help adjusting to the migration or who find they face unexpected issues post-migration.

8. Make a Migration Contact List

Create a list of everyone involved in the migration project. During migrations, it's vital that relevant parties are able to talk to one another, so problems can be troubleshooted quickly. Be sure to include internal IT staff, cloud provider contacts, any IT/migration consultants you may be using, and relevant third-party vendors. Document the role each will play in the migration and all the ways they can be contacted. Distribute the list to the same group of people so the team can contact one another directly, as needed. 

9. Stay Secure

The perfect cloud migration plan involves considering security throughout the migration process, at every step.

As you think about moving your IT systems to the cloud, consider whether you'd be better off delegating OS patching to your cloud hosting provider. That way, you won't need to worry about a security breach resulting from your being too busy to install security patches in a timely manner.

If you have a large amount of data or a slow network connection, you may want to physically ship some of your data to your new cloud host to speed up the initial data transfer. Be sure such data are encrypted, so data can't leak if your package gets lost on its way to your cloud provider's data centres. Finally, when it comes time to decommission the physical hardware you have on-site, be sure that all of the data is securely wiped from hardware before the device is sold, donated or recycled.

Bear in mind that your new cloud will need a firewall of some sort. That firewall will need rules. You may also want to think about how you protect any new virtual machines from viruses and other malware.

10. Consider Connectivity

If you're thinking of transferring your data to your new cloud provider via the internet, take some time to consider how long that's going to take, given your connection's available bandwidth.

Transferring hundreds of gigabytes of data, or even Terabytes, isn't instantaneous. Your cloud migration plan must take account of the actual time it will take to transfer all the data.

If you've got a lot of data to transfer, transferring the data on physical media is usually an option. However, post-migration, there may still be a lot of data flowing between your new cloud and your WAN or office LAN. If that' the case, you need to think about improving your office internet connection now, as getting a brand new leased line installed can take months.

Large firms and technically sophisticated smaller companies that opt to use the big public cloud platforms may choose to get dedicated connections to these platforms, for example using AWS Direct Connect or Azure ExpressRoute. In shifting workloads to the cloud, much of the traffic that previously flowed between on-premise servers and on-premise users will need to be routed via your data lines to your cloud hosting provider.

11. Schedule Training

Make sure to schedule some training for your IT staff. They will need to know how to accomplish tasks using your new cloud systems. For example, they may need to learn how to create, clone and delete cloud-hosted VMs, update cloud firewall rules and configure cloud-based subnets.

You may also need to arrange training for other staff members, especially if you're not just changing where your systems are hosted but also which systems you're using, for example if you're switching from an on-premise CRM system to Salesforce.

12. Backups Are Essential

Before you start migrating the first bit of data to the cloud, make sure you have a complete backup of all of your systems and data.

Next, ensure that you have a process in place to backup your new cloud-based systems. If you are also using SaaS platforms, or have any other data stored on-premise, try to find a single system that will take care of all your backup needs.

Finally, before you begin migrating, test to make sure your system can make a backup and restore it. Don't just assume backups that run without warnings can't be restored. Test that.

Intentionally create databases, file folders etc with the express purposes of being able to delete them, so you can try restoring the most recent generation, and prior generations. 

13. Conduct Trial Migrations

Enlist your cloud service provider to assist with as many trial migrations as you deem necessary, so that you can be sure that your migration attempts have been successful and that everything works correctly. Conduct your initial test migrations after business hours or on the weekend to give yourself plenty of time to fix any problems or revert back to on-site systems if necessary.

You may need some help from staff members in different departments to help you properly test applications that are moving to the cloud.

Make the migration, run test scripts, have relevant users test migrated applications, and fix any material problems uncovered. You may find some issues with file permissions, network errors, or performance. If your attempts to fix these issues during trial migrations are successful, be sure to document any changes that are required to avoid a repeat of the problem when you migrate for real.

When you have finished a test migration, you can decide whether to leave workloads in the cloud or temporarily revert back to prior systems until it is time for the complete migration.

14. Complete Your Migration

So, your trial migrations have gone well, or at least proven educational! You've run sufficient trials that you're confident the 'real' migration will go smoothly. Your perfect cloud migration plan is getting closer to completion.

Double-check that everything is in place to ensure your cloud provider has technical support ready for when you are conducting the final data migration. That way if issues crop up you and your technical partners can deal with many of those issues then and there, allowing you to complete the data migration, but for a few minor niggles.

15. Optimize Your New System

It will be time to ensure you are making the most out of your new cloud-based IT system. First, review your VMs to see if any are getting close to their quota or are showing low usage. From there, you can make any necessary adjustments to your resource quotas.

Now that everything is running, check if any apps are running slow. If they are, figure out the constraint and consider how to address it. Perhaps your initial guesses about how much RAM or bandwidth you'd need updating? Perhaps your VMs need a bit more processing power? This isn't the end of the world. Upgrades on the cloud tend to be quick and easy, provided you can afford the new level of resources.

16. Document Your New Cloud Solution

Work with your team to complete full documentation of the new cloud system. This should include instructions for modifying the system like copying, creating, and deleting VMs. It should also make it clear how to access technical support from cloud providers (or their partners).

17. Schedule Follow-up

Once everything is complete and running smoothly, don't forget to regularly review your cloud system performance and usage. You should set dates to review resource allocation, quotas, billing, and other indicators and make any necessary adjustments. Be sure that any changes are documented for future reference.

Part of that follow-up should be a security check-up, looking through security logs, checking that all user accounts should still exist. Making sure the systems are actually being patched. Checking that backups are still working and that they can be restored. Checking that the file folders/VMs/databases being hosted are still required.  

Don't Go it Alone – Get Help with Your Cloud Migration

If you work for a UK-based organisation and would like some help making the perfect cloud migration plan, hSo is ready to help. Check out our free guide to cloud migration to make sure you have thought of everything before making the switch.

To claim your free copy of our complete guide to cloud migration, click on the banner at the top of this page.