Cloud computing has become an integral practice for managing business information systems.
In addition to costs, there are multiple other benefits because businesses consider shifting into the cloud computing environment.
Scores of other articles in the public domain have reasonable information on the benefits of cloud computing and the types of cloud computing.
Now that you have decided to work on cloud migration for your business systems, the following are some of the easy guide steps for server migration to cloud.
1. Have a Plan
It is important to plan the server migration to cloud with a due evaluation of the impact factors.
Firstly, it is important to deal with the whole scope of data migration strategically.
Choosing a proper cloud service provider offering a compatible range of cloud migration solutions is important.
Technically, it is about deciding on the IaaS (infrastructure as a service), VPS (virtual private servers), and the scope of managed service providers or unmanaged service providers for cloud migration.
The scope of managed or unmanaged is important to understand the support available from the service provider in successful data migration to the cloud computing environment.
Also, the resources need to have a detailed comparison of the costs for managing the cloud migration information systems.
Despite its scalability and flexibility, there is a certain set of costs inclusive of the cloud environment, and additionally, there are some direct and indirect costs associated with data migration into the cloud environment.
The teams need to evaluate all the costs integral to server migration to cloud, and accordingly, choose the right kind of solutions.
2. Service Reliability
In cloud computing services, many service providers are promising significant service set-up for businesses.
However, post-migration, businesses encounter challenges in terms of service reliability, data security, backup systems, and service quality.
For instance, if the businesses are considering the public cloud infrastructure for server migration to cloud, the businesses need to understand what other businesses or applications are being hosted in the public cloud infrastructure for data migration.
The businesses need to understand what other applications are being shared in the environment, and any vulnerable applications host in such public cloud systems.
Also, before the cloud migration to a specific service provider is chosen, it is essential to have a detailed understanding of service level agreements.
More often, in the cloud computing scenario, the service providers post data migration to their servers and have limited accountability for data backup.
Though the services might be committed for uptime, in disaster planning having detailed insights into the process is important.
Thus, the strategy to avoid this challenge is to ensure reliable service providers are chosen for cloud migration, and before the data migration into the systems, there are proper service level agreements in place between the parties involved.
3. Data Compatibility and Interoperability
The other major challenge which the server migration to cloud computing encounters is the issue of data compatibility.
The migration teams must work towards understanding the data compatibility issues with the current servers to the cloud environment.
For instance, if your current servers are running on Linux operating system and the data migration is taking place into cloud migration, the server infrastructure should be compatible.
During the server migration to the cloud, many businesses ignore the need to have compatibility checks.
It is highly recommended that the data migration to the cloud environment needs to be done in a phased manner.
Initially working on a little data migration to the cloud to assess the compatibility as a testing scale is recommended.
If the test results are satisfying and address the requirements, then the server migration to the cloud can be planned at full-scale.
4. Business Continuity Plans
More often, when businesses must launch their applications from a new environment there is a scope of disruption to the regular business environment.
In the case of large-scale traffic to web applications or business systems, it is impractical to terminate services for a specific time frame for cloud migration.
As a result, there is a need for continuity in service while the data migration happens to the cloud migration servers.
In such scenarios, the right strategy is to continue offering services from the regular servers, back up the applications and data, host them in the cloud migration environment for a period, and test the system’s efficiency.
Only upon all the performance parameters result in satisfactory performance, the traffic must be routed to the new cloud migration systems.
Until all the formal tests and real-time traffic flow assessment in the cloud environment are assessed, it is not recommended to route complete traffic from old servers to the server migration to cloud.
However, to overcome this problem, there are many comprehensive solutions and tools available like VMotion from VMware, which will help the data migration from one server location to the other cloud migration in a strategic manner.
The key advantage of using such bridge solutions is to avoid business continuity and assess all the parameters required for successful data migration from the conventional servers to the cloud migration.
Related: What is vMotion and how does it work?
5. Data Backup
Despite that the cloud service providers offering backup services, it is important that the businesses considering data migration to the cloud should have a server backup plan in place to secure the data.
In many instances, during any disaster recovery program, the service providers can manage the application and server applications uptime, but often fail to recover the user data completely.
To avoid this kind of challenge businesses, need to ensure the selection of the right service providers for data migration.
Following the overall structure of the above-mentioned practices for cloud migration can be helpful for successful cloud migration.
Also, selecting subject matter experts like Exabytes Singapore to support with the right tools, technology, solutions, and consultation for data migration can be potential risk mitigation and safe procedure for server migration to the cloud.
Contact us now to learn how best you can adopt cloud migration strategy with VMware and mitigate any challenges that come your way.
Related articles:
