Things to know about cloud migration
As we are moving ahead with time, there’s also growth in the cloud market. It has become a key element for businesses of all sizes to provide IT services. So organizations need such an infrastructure that is agile, flexible, and secure and will help them get rid of the highly expensive on-premise infrastructures. Companies can migrate to the cloud in a faster and easier way by analyzing the right data and addressing the right questions.

Why should an organization migrate to the cloud?

• The modern trends and technologies that are driving digital transformation nowadays, which include the internet of things (IoT), machine learning, artificial intelligence, and big data, also prefer mass migration to cloud computing.
• This is because these technologies have huge amounts of data and require high processing power.
• It can be prohibitively expensive for the organizations to keep up with this growing demand for capacity using conventional infrastructure.
• By comparison, a cloud-based infrastructure is quite flexible and, essentially, infinitely scalable.
• If you think cloud computing is good for your organization’s future but you are not ready to migrate fully, you may consider on-premises, Cloud at Customer, deployment or private cloud systems, which are cloud-ready when you are.

Which computer, storage, and network configuration is most favorable for each workload?

• Many companies neglect the process of properly right-sizing workloads until they are not already on the cloud, which may lead to inaccurate decisions and poor performance on the cloud.
• Right-sizing consists of recognizing the computer and storage configuration for each workload to provide the best cost-performance optimization, which is important for cloud migration planning.
• Looking out for the most suitable computer and storage options for every assignment involves a blend of exhaustive performance assessment, cloud performance benchmarking, usage analysis, and predictive analytics.
• Without performing this exercise precisely, initial workloads in the cloud will probably be over/under-provisioned, which can also result in price and overall performance problems that can halt your migration execution.

What is dependency mapping?

• Once you have recognized all the applications in your infrastructure, you need to understand their dependencies and the way they are related.
• For all applications, recognize which other applications and servers they may be communicating with and how often they are communicating, whether or not the conversation is bi-directional or unidirectional, and what is the latency allowed in the communications between each.
• Dependency mapping is the step where accurate discovery becomes critical.
• Missing applications like Shadow IT, after some findings, may result in application connection disruptions and security issues upon migration.
• Keeping track of all commands and web server requests at high frequencies guarantees that nothing is neglected.

Are there suitable options available for each workload in the cloud?

• A few applications are better suited for the cloud than others. For instance, certain legacy business enterprise hardware can be more cost-efficiently managed on-premises than in the cloud.
• Applications that have bursty CPU and IOPS are a lot more cost-effective in the cloud because companies can benefit from auto-scaling, which permits applications to be turned off when they are not being used.
• Based on the performance of the application, there might or might not be computing or storage options available in the cloud that suit them properly. As a result, an application might cost more or go through overall performance issues in the cloud.
• Performance analysis, usage analysis, and right-sizing will guide you in deciding which applications you should migrate and which you should keep on premises.

How can you identify the complexity of applications to be migrated to the cloud?

• Companies must prioritize applications that are less complex for phase 1 of their migration. These applications might be less risky and less complicated to move.
• The application complexity can be best determined by application classification, dependencies, and CPU usage.
• For example, applications that are not mission-critical such as disaster recovery, staging, and development incline to migrate early.
• Applications such as home-grown and mission-critical applications as well as those that have more dependencies and higher CPU usage should be migrated later.

Which ports need to be opened?

• Having an understanding of every application’s firewall rules help in configuring your security groups.
• It will also help you know which applications are communicating on which ports and which ports are needed to be kept open so as to enable inbound or outbound application connectivity to work.
• In addition, you also need to understand your TCP and UDP ports that can help you build your firewall rules for your subnets.