What if one day, you were told to migrate to AWS/GCP/Azure/any other cloud provider? It would likely introduce some stress, to understate the case, right?
I’ve seen quite a few migrations in my career and, in this article, I would like to share some thoughts to help DevOps engineers, architects, managers or anyone else who might be involved in such a migration. I’m focusing on migration to AWS mostly because I have a specialization in this subject and because it’s fairly common, but I think these experiences are applicable to any other cloud provider. For this case, I’ll cover migration from on-premises to a cloud because these types of migrations are much more difficult (in my opinion) than cloud-to-cloud migrations. I’ll also share my own perspective on do’s and don’ts of migrations. But please filter them through critical thinking and remember that everybody has their own background and experience. What’s good for one might be bad for another.
What is a Cloud Migration?
Let’s start by defining what migration is. How do you know if it’s a migration? I like the following definition:
Cloud migration is the process of moving a data center’s capabilities to IaaS providers.
“Capabilities” is the keyword. A business does not migrate servers/virtual machines/hardware/data or anything else. A business migrates its capabilities.
There are seven migration strategies (or seven Rs): Relocate, rehost (lift and shift), replatform, repurchase, rearchitect/refactor, retain and retire.
For example, I’ve seen situations when a company was creating a new product that would replace an existing one hosted on-premises. The product would be designed to be well-architected and cloud-native from the very beginning and would be hosted in a cloud. Is that migration or greenfield project type? From the definition above, we can say that this is a migration. This is a rearchitecture strategy for migration.
What if we buy a new SaaS subscription instead of some software we host on-premises? This is also a migration: A repurchase strategy.
Let’s dig deeper into these seven migration strategies:
Relocate. We host some workloads on-premises and move them as-is into the cloud. This is possible in limited cases; when we migrate cloud-agnostic workloads or when a platform might be cloud-native. Examples: Relocate a Kubernetes cluster from on-premises to the cloud or relocate VMware machines with VMware Cloud.
Rehost. This is also known as lift and shift. We convert virtual machines/servers on-premises to virtual machines in the cloud. Examples: Migrate on-premises virtual machines to EC2 instances with CloudEndure, or create EC2 instances, install the software and apply the same configuration as on-premises.
Replatform. We migrate a workload to a cloud-native platform without rearchitecting systems. Examples: Migrating PostgreSQL to AWS RDS or Docker containers to ECS.
Repurchase. We replace some custom/legacy system with SaaS. Example: Replace custom on-premises email system with SendGrid or replace CRM with Salesforce.
Rearchitect. We change your application’s architecture to be cloud-native and use managed cloud services. That also includes rebuilding from scratch. Examples: Change the code of your apps to upload files to S3 instead of local storage or containerize an app and migrate to ECS.
Retire. We decide that a piece of the workload will be eliminated if not needed. Example: Log servers are no longer needed as migrated applications use CloudWatch.
Retain. We leave it on-premises. Usually, it’s temporary. Example: A huge Oracle database with a lot of functions and customization is not moved to AWS because of the massive costs. It’s decided to keep it on-premises until it’s replaced with another solution in the modernization phase.
I like the following picture that shows the high-level stages of each migration type. It may be a helpful cheat sheet to approach migrations.
Picture Source: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/enterprise-strategy/new-possibilities-seven-strategies-to-accelerate-your-application-migration-to-aws/
Migration Don’ts
I don’t recommend the following when performing a migration:
Migrating too quickly. A business might think, “We have to migrate to the cloud quickly. Let’s do lift and shift right now!” It’s better not to start right away. Are you sure that rehosting strategy will really be faster than some other strategy? In one instance, we tried to migrate on-premises VMs, but it didn’t work because the OS on the machines was quite old. Some OS-level dependencies didn’t work on AWS’ hardware. This required a lot of configuration work, custom code and testing and the initial estimates were completely wrong. It eventually turned out to be a replatform.
Assess what you have, analyze it, analyze the business case and think. During this engineering work, we should stop and think before we act.
Migration without clear goals. Why are you migrating? If you can’t answer the question, you probably need to find an answer or not migrate at all. I’ve seen situations in which businesses wanted to migrate to the cloud to reduce costs. They performed a lift and shift migration without doing a total cost analysis. Only after the fact did they realize that it cost even more than when it was in a colocation center. This migration may be considered unsuccessful.
To avoid this, define clear goals and define the target state that achieves these goals. If costs are the driver, make the proper calculations and plan accordingly. Cost optimization will be the main thing to focus on when you plan your target state. If availability is the reason, measure it, define SLOs and focus on availability in a target state.
Black box migration. Don’t treat workloads you migrate as a black box. It is almost critically important to know what exactly you migrate, what technical requirements it has, what dependencies it has and how it works. That information will allow you to choose the correct strategy for workload migration. If this is not done, there’s an excellent chance that you will choose the wrong path and the result will be lost. Capturing information about your systems is the most important task when planning.
Don’t forget well-architected. Migration is stressful. That’s why people tend to try to get through it quickly on as short of a timeline as possible, focusing on the only thing: Making everything work in the cloud ASAP. They set aside well-architected framework pillars. This is a mistake; it may lead to a different set of negative consequences of different severity. Don’t ignore well-architected framework pillars, or you won’t know about potential issues or risks until they have already materialized.
Use one strategy for everything. It’s always easy to make a single overarching plan for all workloads. For example, deciding to do lift and shift and then rehost everything in the cloud. But what if some things could be retired? What if some components could be replatformed with little effort? You will save significant resources by analyzing all of the components of the workload and deciding on a unique strategy for every component. Collect data and plan properly.
Cloud Migration Do’s
Do perform a cloud readiness assessment. If a person migrates to a new location, they should consider:
- That the climate will be different
- The language spoken in that location may be different
- The cost of living will be different and perhaps more expensive
When a company migrates to the cloud, they should ask questions including:
- Have we considered all the risks?
- What must be changed for the workload to actually work?
- Do we have the human resources required for all of the work?
- Do I have the budget to accomplish everything?
The Cloud Readiness Assessment is a long-form interview about varying processes in the company that identifies whether a company is ready to live in the cloud. It’s based on the Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) and allows us to understand what should be changed so that a migration can happen successfully. AWS has a Cloud Readiness Assessment tool which covers all of that. I urge you to use this process for all workloads being considered for migration.
Create a business case. Describe the business case. What are the drivers for migration? What problems are resolved with the migration? What goals should be achieved by migration? Be specific: If you intend to reduce costs, then calculate the sum. If you intend to improve availability, then define a clear SLO. That will be the number-one driving force for your migration. All other artifacts should be based on it.
Automate discovery and data collection. Use automated data collection and analysis to create a portfolio for migration. Don’t base your analysis on manually created spreadsheets or verbal communication. Let machines collect data about inventory and usage statistics. The more precise data you collect, the better. AWS Migration Evaluator service will help you to do this in most cases.
Portfolio management. Create a portfolio of workloads to migrate, analyze them, choose a migration strategy for each, choose some for the pilot/first wave migration, estimate timelines and prepare a plan. Execute the migration after that. Repeat until the migration portfolio is empty. Share the data. Have subject matter experts review it.
Found CCoE. This is part of the CAF mentioned above. Before executing the migration, create a team of people responsible for creating a strategy and defining a good standard of living in the cloud: A Cloud Center of Excellence. It should include people with a variety of subject matter expertise including management, operations, platform, people, finance and every other department consuming or providing services in the cloud. These people will prepare a landing zone for the migration, hard policies and softer policies for the landing zone; preparing the company for life in the cloud. Don’t fear revisiting any policy. Make changes as new factors come to light.
Well-architected framework reviews (WAFR). Do well-architected framework reviews (WAFRs) during migration waves and after them. That will allow you to avoid foolish mistakes and to get a high-level overview of what you have done from a technical perspective.
Modernization plan. Prepare a modernization plan along with the migration plan. Migration isn’t the end of the story. To be effective in the cloud, you will have to do well-architected reviews and modernization. The first modernization is likely to be huge; that’s why it’s important to plan and to schedule budgets and resources in advance. Failure to do this will lead to increased operational costs, not decreased costs.
Summary
If we want to reduce the risk associated with a migration and to make it less stressful, we do not rush. You may believe that rushing will save you time and other problems will be managed later, but experience tells us that this is wrong. The most likely outcome is that you will end up resolving all the issues encountered in the most stressful situation possible: When you cut over to your new cloud-based production environment. Instead of resolving issues in a well-considered way and in advance, the choices will be made under duress. Proper engineering principles must be applied here. Picking up a bridge and moving it from one river and plunking it down on another never works. The key to migration success is to measure, analyze, design and plan. Migrating a workload to the cloud is hard, but I hope these do’s and don’ts will make it easier.
