The Quick Start Cloud Migration Checklist

You are convinced that it is time to migrate to the cloud. You are ready to reap all of the benefits, including greater efficiency, lower costs and staying agile and competitive in a rapidly changing marketplace.

However, if you have never attempted cloud migration before, there are certain things you need to keep in mind. To ensure that your cloud migration is successful, you need a cloud migration checklist. Read on to learn what you need to ensure that your migration is smooth and hassle-free.

Landscape Analysis

If you were about to go on a long car trip, you would check your vehicle before you left to make sure it was up to the task. The same principle holds true of cloud migration. You have to make sure that your current IT landscape enables the migration rather than impedes it. Check:

• Compatibility between your applications and your cloud platform
• How your users access existing apps
• Level of availability of your computing resources

Project Scoping

Go back for second to the metaphor of the car trip. Before you set out, you need a roadmap so you know where you are going. Project scoping is akin to creating a roadmap for cloud migration.

Determining the scope of a project ensures that you stay on the right path and that the cloud migration is on time and on (or under) budget. To help constrain scope, ask:

• How much needs to be migrated
• Whether there are integration or specialization requirements
• How ready the organization is for such a migration

Migration Design

A successful cloud migration is based upon a comprehensive design. Just like a road trip, you need to plot directions and plan for traffic in order to get to you destination on time.

Cloud migration design involves laying out how the implementation process will go (including plans for transitioning to the cloud and testing the migration). Disaster recovery is also a vital component of the migration design. Check:

• Your implementation plan – get buy in from key decision makers
• The step-by-step transition process you will follow
• Your plan for testing the migration
• Contingency plans in case something goes wrong

Configuration

Configuration is a fact of life in on-premise deployments as well as those in the cloud. You have to consider a configuration that works for the entire company, not just a single department or team. Otherwise, only a small number of people will benefit from the migration. Check:

• Get buy in from all department heads before making your migration plan
• That you have an agreed upon configuration with universal approval
• A post-migration training plan for any department who will have configuration changes

Testing Design

Migration design has already been covered in this post. It is important to note, however, that migration design and testing design are two separate items on your cloud migration checklist.

Your test design needs to answer several vital questions. Check:

• Did all of the data migrate?
• Can every user access it?
• Are all of your components “talking” to one another?
• Can you monitor everything you need to monitor?

When you can positively answer all of those questions, your test is comprehensive.

Validation

Validation is the last step on the cloud migration checklist. It is the result of successful testing.

Once you have validated that everything works the way it is supposed to work, you can close the chapter on your cloud migration. Do not be afraid to validate as much as possible. It is the only way you will know that the cloud migration is successful.

Check as a critical few:

• Do all the unit tests from the previous stack work in the new installation?
• Monitoring services, do those give same or very similar results?
• Website performance, does the Apdex (Application Performance Index) score line up with previous?

Treasure Data is an invaluable tool for the enterprise looking to migrate successfully to the cloud. Get the Treasure Data demo today to explore all the integrations possible with this comprehensive cloud-based tool.