Best Approaches for Cloud Migration - Simplified

Cloud computing is one of the biggest achievements of the modern era. Especially in the last few years, they have rapidly gained popularity among many users. In this article, we will be looking at different approaches for cloud migration. We will be going through them in detail and learn about their difference and how to choose the best method for your need.

Different Approaches for Cloud Migration

There are different ways that you use for cloud migration. One of the most used strategies is known as the 6R method. It is a method that is developed by AWS by improving on the already existing 5Rs model published by Gartner in 2010. Let us look at the different components of this cloud migration methodology.

The 6R model is divided into 6 parts. Let us look at them one by one.

Rehosting

This method is known as lift and shift. This is one of the simplest methods among the six. In this method what we essentially do is lift the data from the source and just shift it to the destination. No optimizations are made to the data to be more compatible with the cloud servers.

It is usually performed using lift and shift tools which are known as mobility tools. One of the major drawbacks of using this method is that it fails to exploit all the features provided by the cloud server. It is most suited for organizations that want the lowest downtime and is taking their first step into the cloud system.

Replatforming

This approach for cloud migration is also known as lift tinker and shift. This is a modified version of the first method. Here the data is lifted from the source account and some optimizations were done to it before it is shifted to the destination. The optimizations are done in such a way that the core architecture of the applications is not changed.

It is best suited for organizations that want to take more advantage of the cloud features like scalability, elasticity, cost, performance, etc but don’t want to invest the money and the time to entirely rewrite the applications.

Repurchasing

This cloud migration methodology is also known as drop and shop. In this method, the old application from the old on-premise is dropped and new applications with similar features on the cloud systems are brought.

This approach for cloud migration is used by organizations that want to replace their legacy applications completely with SaaS solutions from the cloud that offers similar features. This helps the users to save a lot of time when compared to rebuilding the entire architecture of their application.

Refactoring

This approach for cloud migration is the most time-consuming and complex method among the six that we are discussing today. It is entirely different from all the other methods that we have mentioned. In this cloud migration methodology, the entire application right from the core is revamped to make sure it takes proper advantage of all the features offered by the cloud servers.

Even though this is an expensive method using this ensures that you will be taking advantage of all the features offered by the cloud servers. Hence future-proofing the whole setup for all the upcoming applications and technologies.

Retain

There are cases when a legacy application that is present on the on-premise server simply doesn’t have an alternative on the cloud systems. In these cases, it consumes a lot of time and expenses to migrate these data to the cloud server. In this approach for cloud migration, we move to a hybrid system to keep the legacy applications running on the on-premise servers while the rest of the data is transferred to the cloud systems.

Retire

Before the cloud migration takes place an entire analysis of the data present on the server is done. This is done to get an idea of the data that we need to migrate to the cloud systems. In many cases, during this, we might have applications or data that are no longer in use. Migrating these to the cloud systems can waste precious resources like money and time. Hence we simply just turn these services off and replace them with newer and better components from the cloud.

Why Having a Professional Cloud Service Provider is Important?

From the above, you can see that when it comes to the different approaches for cloud migration there are many choices. In many cases, this confuses the end users and they end up failing to migrate their data. And in case this leads to a data loss it can cause a big loss to the company. SysTools provides one of the

Hi, I am a tech enthusiast who likes to write about gadgets to help people get most out of their technology.