Considerations when migrating to a new IT infrastructure
Whether your company is looking to migrate from an “on-premises” infrastructure or from an existing cloud-based solution, there are several considerations that you must take into account. The following is a brief overview of some of the most important ones, but complete consideration should be given to avoid any unpleasant surprises and ensure that your migration is as smooth as possible.
Aligning IT to business goals
Communicating what the cloud will and will not do is an important part of any migration process, as it will help to understand the expectations of your stakeholders. If you have restricted data transfer or compliance to meet legal requirements, these should be documented in your business case and work with your cloud provider to align your needs with their solution. Companies such as AvePoint have the experience needed to support a migration project and keep all stakeholders informed.
Infrastructure stack
Cloud computing has come a long way and the landscape has changed significantly in the past decade. When it first arrived, there were only a couple of IaaS choices. However, now there are many more options available, and each one has different features and drawbacks. A migration to public cloud services would likely lead to changes in the infrastructure stack that your company is currently using. Therefore a complete re-evaluation of your servers will be required. This is especially true if you are migrating from an earlier version of cloud computing, such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), to Platform as a Service (PaaS).
Cloud Workload Analysis
When migrating your workloads to a new cloud infrastructure, you should perform a cloud workload analysis. This will help you choose the best-suited cloud service for your business, ensuring that it meets all of your business requirements and can handle the projected load.
The analysis should take into account factors such as performance, reliability, availability, security, and cost factors before migrating your data to the cloud. The results of this exercise will also provide valuable insight into what changes might be needed to ensure continuous performance once your applications are migrated.
Cloud Data Protection
Cloud computing presents new challenges when it comes to data protection. Different clouds can implement different data protection methods, so you need to ensure that your business requirements are met. There are two main ways to ensure this, either by migrating your applications and data to a cloud provider that offers Data Protection as a Service (DaaS), or by using an integrated cloud solution that offers backup, archive, and disaster recovery within the same system.
Legacy systems
Many legacy systems are going to need to be migrated into the cloud. However, they may not always work well with today’s cloud services and therefore require some re-architecture or replacement. From a logistical standpoint, this is important as you will want to ensure that your workloads do not slow down as you move them into the cloud.
This could be in the form of building a new infrastructure so that every application is hosted on a single instance or moving from a traditional virtualized environment to an elastic one. An important consideration is whether this will involve worker nodes, master nodes, or both.
When moving to a new cloud infrastructure, it is important to pay attention to the above points. It will help you ensure smooth operation of your infrastructure, protect your data and avoid unpleasant surprises when migrating to a new cloud environment.
