Cloud migration is the method of moving applications, data, or workloads from on-premises or conventional cloud hosting to a more adaptable, scalable, reliable, highly ableable, secure, and cost-optimized cloud computing infrastructure. 

Here are the essential steps for an effective cloud relocation:

1. Analyzing the Existing Environment

  • Compatibility Concerns: Determine if the existing deployment infrastructure is compatible with your application’s requirements. For instance, assess if your application demands high GPU support, which may not be available in the current hosting platform.
  • Performance Limitations: Evaluate whether the resources in the current deployment infrastructure meet your application’s performance needs. For example, examine if the allocated RAM and CPU cores suffice for your workload or if performance bottlenecks hinder optimal operation.
  • Resource Allocation: Identify any difficulties in dynamically allocating resources based on fluctuating application workloads. Ensure the system can scale resources seamlessly on demand to meet demand spikes.
  • Security Gaps: Assess the level of security provided by the current infrastructure. Look for features such as robust firewall configurations, access control lists, WAF(Web Application Firewalls), VPC(Virtual Private Clouds), and comprehensive security monitoring and alert systems.
  • Autoscaling Challenges: Determine if the current infrastructure supports autoscaling capabilities to efficiently adjust server capacity based on workload changes. Autoscaling can optimize cloud costs and enhance customer experience by ensuring consistent performance.
  • Limitations in Serverless Services: Evaluate the availability and adequacy of serverless solutions required for your application’s functionality. Confirm if essential services like Managed Databases, Serverless Functions, Storage solutions, Load Balancers, CDN(Content Delivery Networks), and API Gateways are offered.
  • Unavailability of Necessary Servers/Services: Verify if essential managed services such as SNS, RDS, Lambda, object storage, search engines, load balancers, CDNs, API gateways, Container Orchestration tools (K8s-Master), or elastic container services are unavailable or inadequately supported in the current infrastructure.
  • Cost Management and Optimization: Assess if the current infrastructure incurs high costs or lacks optimization measures. Explore strategies to optimize resource usage and reduce expenses while maintaining performance and reliability.
  • Infrastructure Provisioning: Evaluate the infrastructure’s ability to provision resources efficiently. If provisioning is inadequate, it may hinder the timely deployment of new components or services.
  • Configuration Management: Determine if the infrastructure allows for easy reconfiguration or modification and rollback of changes. Without appropriate configuration management, it becomes challenging to maintain the stability and consistency of the infrastructure.
  • Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Verify if the current hosting system supports CI/CD pipelines for automated testing, integration, and deployment. Lack of CI/CD capabilities can impede the rapid and reliable release of updates and features to production environments.
  • Multiregion Deployment: Consider deploying your service in multiple regions to cater to a broader audience or enhance redundancy. Serving your application from distant regions can result in higher latency, impacting user experience, especially if your primary audience is concentrated in specific regions.
  • Latency Optimization: Prioritize deploying your application closer to your target audience to minimize latency and ensure optimal performance. For instance, if your main user base is located in North Virginia, hosting your application in Mumbai might introduce significant latency, leading to subpar user experiences.
  • Cloud Provider Consideration: Choose a cloud provider with regional data centers strategically located to support your target audience. If your current provider lacks regional presence in key locations, it can adversely affect both performance and costs due to increased latency and inefficient resource allocation.

2. Primitive Infrastructure Enhancement

If the aforementioned concerns are impacting your business application, it’s crucial to consider migration, relocation, optimization, or any necessary enhancement.

Once you have identified these concerns through an analysis of your existing infrastructure or hosting solution, your first step should be to mitigate them within your current hosting setup, if possible. This approach can help you to minimize the costs, time, and effort.

To mitigate dependencies, consider the following initiatives, if they align with your budget:

  • Workload Assessment: Conduct thorough testing of your application’s workload to determine its infrastructure resource requirements accurately.
  • Resource Allocation: Allocate the server resources according to the application’s workload, ensuring optimal performance.
  • Load Balancing: Implement a load balancer to distribute traffic across multiple servers, ensuring high availability and even load distribution. Utilize DB clustering methods with multiple database servers for enhanced data availability and security.
  • Remote or Distributed Filesystem: Set up a distributed file system to store application files and assets remotely, ensuring accessibility and centralized object storage. Consider using remote cloud object storage solutions like S3, NFS, and Others. 
  • Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan: Establish a backup system for recovery, rollback, and migration purposes. Take regular snapshots of servers or create template images(if possible). Additionally, back up database data to remote storage daily, weekly, and monthly.
  • Security Enhancement: Strengthen security measures at the OS layer if cloud firewall or network layer options are limited. Utilize tools like UFW, IPTables, and Fail2Ban for firewall and intrusion prevention. Implement security measures at the HTTP server level, such as SSL, rate limiting, and cross-site scripting protection. Remove unnecessary users, utilize application-specific users, and employ best practices for application security.

Migrate to Mitigate the Desired Requirements: 

If the above-mentioned solutions fail to mitigate your application requirements, migrating to a public cloud namely AWS, Azure, or GCP becomes imperative. Here’s an overview of the solutions they offer and their purpose:

  • Secure Infrastructure with Private and Public Network: Utilize the cloud provider’s robust network infrastructure, combining private and public networks to ensure secure data transmission and access control.
  • Managed Database Management System: Leverage the cloud provider’s managed database services like Amazon RDS (AWS), Azure SQL Database (Azure), or Cloud SQL (GCP) for efficient database management with automated backups, scaling, and maintenance.
  • Serverless Database and Compute Solution: Take advantage of serverless offerings like Amazon Aurora Serverless (AWS), Azure SQL Database Serverless (Azure), or Cloud Firestore (GCP) to eliminate the need for provisioning and managing servers, optimizing costs and scalability.
  • On-Demand Server/Service Resource: Access on-demand compute resources through services like Amazon EC2 (AWS), Azure Virtual Machines (Azure), or Google Compute Engine (GCE) for flexible and scalable infrastructure provisioning.
  • Cloud-Managed Application and Network Load Balancer: Deploy your applications with cloud-managed load balancers such as Elastic Load Balancing (AWS), Azure Load Balancer (Azure), or Google Cloud Load Balancing (GCLB) to distribute traffic efficiently across multiple instances, enhancing reliability and performance.
  • Cloud Managed Autoscaling Solution: Implement autoscaling capabilities offered by services like Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling (AWS), Azure Autoscale (Azure), or Google Cloud Autoscaler (GCP) to automatically adjust computing resources based on demand, optimizing resource utilization and cost efficiency.
  • Distributed Object Storage: Store and manage large volumes of unstructured data using distributed object storage solutions such as Amazon S3 (AWS), Azure Blob Storage (Azure), or Google Cloud Storage (GCS), ensuring high availability, durability, and scalability.
  • Cloud-Managed Container Orchestration Solution: Deploy and manage containerized applications with cloud-managed container orchestration platforms like Amazon ECS or EKS (AWS), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) (Azure), or Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) (GCP), simplifying deployment, scaling, and management.
  • Cloud Monitoring and Alert Solution: Monitor and manage your cloud resources effectively with built-in monitoring and alerting services like Amazon CloudWatch (AWS), Azure Monitor (Azure), or Google Cloud Monitoring (GCP), enabling proactive troubleshooting and optimization.
  • Managed Notification Solution: Use managed notification services such as Amazon SNS (AWS), Azure Notification Hubs (Azure), or Google Cloud Pub/Sub (GCP) to send notifications to your application’s users or other systems efficiently.
  • Managed Software-Based Firewall System: Implement managed firewall solutions like AWS WAF (AWS), Azure Firewall (Azure), or Google Cloud Armor (GCP) to protect your applications from malicious attacks and unauthorized access.
  • Multiregional CDN: Distribute content globally with multiregional content delivery networks like Amazon CloudFront (AWS), Azure Content Delivery Network (Azure CDN), or Google Cloud CDN (GCP), reducing latency and improving user experience across different geographic regions.
  • Managed API Gateway: Expose and manage APIs securely with managed API gateway services such as Amazon API Gateway (AWS), Azure API Management (Azure), or Google Cloud Endpoints (GCP), simplifying API management and integration.
  • Cloud DNS Manager: Manage domain names and DNS records efficiently with cloud DNS management services like Amazon Route 53 (AWS), Azure DNS (Azure), or Google Cloud DNS (GCP), ensuring reliable and scalable domain resolution.
  • Cloud Certification Manager: Manage SSL/TLS certificates securely with cloud certification management services like AWS Certificate Manager (AWS), Azure Key Vault (Azure), or Google Cloud Key Management Service (GCP), simplifying certificate provisioning and management.
  • User and Service Access Control Solution: Implement robust access control mechanisms using identity and access management services like AWS IAM (AWS), Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), or Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM), ensuring secure authentication and authorization.
  • Elastic Storage Solution: Scale storage resources dynamically with elastic storage solutions like Amazon EBS (AWS), Azure Disk Storage (Azure), or Google Cloud Persistent Disk (GCP), accommodating changing workload requirements.
  • PaaS (Platform as a Service) Based Solution: Develop and deploy applications rapidly with PaaS solutions like AWS Elastic Beanstalk (AWS), Azure App Service (Azure), or Google App Engine (GAE), abstracting away infrastructure management complexities.
  • IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) Solution: Customize and manage infrastructure resources according to your specific requirements with IaaS solutions like AWS EC2 (AWS), Azure Virtual Machines (Azure), or Google Compute Engine (GCE), offering flexibility and control.
  • Lambda Function Solution: Execute code without provisioning or managing servers using serverless compute services like AWS Lambda (AWS), Azure Functions (Azure), or Google Cloud Functions (GCP), enabling event-driven, scalable application architectures.
  • Application Build, Test, and Deployment Solution: Streamline the development lifecycle with integrated build, test, and deployment services like AWS CodePipeline (AWS), Azure DevOps (Azure), or Google Cloud Build (GCP), automating workflows and ensuring consistency.
  • IaC Solution like CloudFormation or Other Third-party Tools like Terraform: Define and provision cloud infrastructure using infrastructure as code (IaC) solutions like AWS CloudFormation (AWS), Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates (Azure), or HashiCorp Terraform (GCP), enabling repeatable, version-controlled infrastructure deployments.

By leveraging these services from leading public cloud providers, along with Multi-Regional Facility, you can address various infrastructure and operational challenges while benefiting from scalability, reliability, security, and cost-effectiveness across multiple geographic regions.

Transitioning to the managed and self-managed solutions mentioned above offers numerous benefits, including cost reduction, enhanced performance, high availability, scalability, reliability, security, and disaster recovery capabilities. However, embarking on the journey to migrate your application to cloud infrastructure requires careful planning to ensure a successful transition with zero data loss, cost optimization, improved solutions, seamless integration, and minimal downtime. These initiatives not only streamline operations but also minimize costs, which are crucial for business sustainability. Below are essential steps for implementing a comprehensive migration plan:

3. Migration Planning: 

Before you begin migrating, make sure you have a well-thought-out plan in place.

Before Migration Pre-Analysis:

  • Before initiating the migration process, it’s crucial to conduct a thorough assessment of the application’s current workload. This includes evaluating factors such as the number of concurrent users, daily, weekly, and monthly visitors (traffic), application page sizes, bandwidth requirements, capacity to handle concurrent users, and performance metrics like Application Programming Interface (API) request processing and database query durations.

If the application or database processes are experiencing prolonged durations, it’s imperative to identify areas for optimization. While immediate migration to the cloud may be necessary, it’s important to anticipate heightened resource consumption until optimization measures are implemented. Therefore, a temporary migration followed by optimization efforts is recommended.

Cloud Compatibility Check:

  • When considering deployment options, compatibility with cloud environments is paramount. For instance, if deploying the application across distributed servers or utilizing container orchestration technologies, adjustments must be made to ensure compatibility. This might involve transitioning from local to remote file systems or implementing caching solutions to enhance performance.

Additionally, integrating application logs monitoring tools like Sentry may require to initialised it into the codebase and updating the env, setting up the log retention percentage to facilitate centralized monitoring of application logs, and optimizing the cost. Ensure that these changes are well-documented and thoroughly tested to prevent disruptions during the migration process.

Selection of the Cloud Platform and Services:

During the migration process, consider integrating the following solutions to optimize migration, deployment, and maintenance:

  • Selecting the appropriate Cloud Platform entails weighing business requirements against cost considerations. Opting for a platform that offers cost-effective solutions while meeting application needs is essential. Additionally, choosing the right deployment server or service, such as serverless or containerized environments can optimize scalability and reliability.
  • For database management, options like RDS or Serverless DB offer scalability, with the latter providing auto-scaling capabilities. However, it’s crucial to consider the costs, especially if database optimization is still pending. Implementing a database cluster and applying the monitoring monitoring system can help manage resource usage efficiently.
  • Utilizing remote or distributed object storage ensures high availability and data security while minimizing costs for static applications or services. Integration of caching solutions like Redis can enhance application and database performance, reducing overall load.
  • Incorporating search engine solutions like Apache Solr or Elasticsearch may be necessary for text or content-searching functionalities, although resource consumption should be monitored.
  • Leveraging CloudFront as a content delivery network (CDN) can enhance global application performance by reducing latency and improving transfer speeds. By caching content on edge locations worldwide, CloudFront optimizes content delivery to users, thereby enhancing application availability and performance.
  • Utilization of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform simplifies the provisioning and management of cloud resources. By maintaining configuration states and facilitating version control with tools like Git, IaC ensures transparency, reduces errors and enhances security and auditing capabilities.

4. Deployment Environment Preparation:

Infra provisioning: 

  • Prepare Infrastructure as Code (IaC) scripts, Define your infrastructure, and Version control to Keep track of changes to your infrastructure code using a version control system, like Git, and Automate the deployment using a tool like Terraform Plan and Apply, or Ansible Tower to automate the deployment of your infrastructure code to your environment.

Self-Mmanage Database Server or DB-Cluster or Cloud-Manage-DB part:

  • Integrate the necessary remote repository and update the system repository 
  • Ensure the pre-security of both application and database servers. 
  • Install the Database Server and Configure the necessary things like admin user, and secrets, port, remote access, replication(if required), clustering(if required) etc.
  • Database Application The User creates and Database Creates with the appropriate database name and assigns appropriate privileges to the users. 
  • Install the required extensions if required. 
  • Test the Database accessibility using the newly created credentials as expected. 

Application Server/Build Server/Container Orchestration Tools:

  • Integrate the necessary remote repository and update the system repository 
  • Install and configure the necessary packages 
  • Integrate the codebase into the deployment or build server, preferably through SSH with a remote repository
  • Pull the codebase into the build environment
  • Create a virtual environment if necessary to isolate the build environment and application dependencies.
  • Install the application dependencies and process manager 
  • Prepare or modify the env as per new requirements. 
  • Do the test build in the new build environment and store the build artifact in the remote storage or locally
  • Test the build and conduct security scans of the artifacts.
  • Deploy the build artifacts into the deployment environment, which may include a deployment server, container orchestrating environment, or S3 bucket for static applications
  • If introducing a CI/CD pipeline, automate these processes within the pipeline.
  • Install and configure the HTTP server, or use a proxy server for the sec of extra layer security, or use a cloud-managed load balancer.

5. Migration Execution 

Pre-action item:

  • Stop the database write permission temporarily from the application end to prevent user-facing downtime that will reduce the user’s bad impressions.
  • Check the current Database size and take a Database dump from the Old-Database-Server. If the dump size is significant, consider compressing it and moving it to an application public directory for faster download, For Example: wget htpps://old-application.com/db-dump-x-date.sql.gzip this will take less time than SCP.
  • Ensure to verify the size of the DB-Dump after transferring it from the Old-DB-Server to the new one. Following this, securely import the DB-Dump into the new DB-Server and confirm accessibility using the Application-DB-User. Additionally, meticulously check whether all data has been successfully migrated as anticipated. 
  • Integrate the database into to the application, update the env, and rebuild and test the integration. 

Domain Migrate and SSL Integration

  • After successful deployment and testing, proceed with migrating the domain from the old server to the new one. Expect a brief downtime during DNS propagation. Following migration, integrate SSL certification. If using a Self-Managed HTTP Server or Load Balancer, Integrate SSL Directly. Alternatively, with a Cloud Load Balancer, SSL Integration can be handled there.

Disaster Recover Setup 

  • Implement a robust backup strategy by creating daily, weekly, and monthly database backup scripts. Automate these backups using the cronjobs, storing them with date and time stamps in remote storage or separate storage, particularly for self-managed servers or database clusters. For Cloud Managed Databases, enable the built-in backup system and configure retention periods. Additionally, enable auto snapshotting or create server images/templates to capture the current state, maintain the codebase version controlling method using git and maintain the rollback strategy, these facilitating will help you to swift recovery.

Logging and Monitoring Setup 

  • Configure server metrics monitoring tools to track resource utilization. Opt for cost-effective cloud monitoring tools or deploy self-managed open-source solutions like Prometheus and Grafana, or paid options like Nagios, Zabbix, Graylog, among others. Implement application log monitoring tools such as ELK Stack, Datadog, Sentry, SolarWinds Log Analyzer, Splunk, Sumo Logic, Loggly, or Papertrail. Set up alert managers with notification systems to promptly address any issues, aiding in proactive monitoring of application and infrastructure health. This comprehensive setup not only reduces troubleshooting time but also facilitates decision-making regarding enhancements, scaling, and cost management, contributing to maintaining service level agreements (SLAs) and providing clear metrics for both clients and service providers.

Documentation and Testing: 

  • Created technical documentation covering infrastructure and application architecture, utilized the underlying tools and technologies, service integrations, use cases, minimal maintenance instructions, contact information for maintainers and implementers, emergency contact points, communication channels, billing assumptions regarding load capacity, management of paid services bills, and other pertinent information. Ensure rigorous testing of the documentation to verify its accuracy and usability.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, migrating to the cloud offers huge benefits, including scalability, reliability, security, and cost-effectiveness. By above mentioned a structured approach encompassing thorough analysis, planning, deployment, execution, and documentation, organizations can ensure a smooth transition with minimal disruption. Moreover, continuous monitoring, optimization, and disaster recovery planning are essential for maintaining great performance and resilience in the cloud environment. With careful consideration of the factors outlined in this guide, businesses can maximize the success of their cloud migration endeavors and leverage the full potential of cloud computing for their operations.

This page was last edited on 28 July 2024, at 5:40 pm