Cloud computing
Cloud computing is becoming the dominant computing model with good reason. Benefits include easier collaboration, efficiency, and flexibility. However, cloud implementations must be planned carefully to avoid business impact and realize the maximum value.
Why move to the cloud?
- Applications and data are accessible from virtually any internet-connected device.
- Development shops get applications to market quickly.
- Built in redundancy and data backup for disaster recovery.
- Savings on equipment and data center space.
- Utility pay structure only pay for what you use.
- Infrastructure scales on demand.
- numerous storage options
- different as-a-service hosting models
- prebuilt tools and features
- Virtual private cloud, encryption and API keys help keep data secure.
- Cloud service providers manage the infrastructure, enabling organizations to focus on application development and other priorities.
- Service providers regularly update offerings to give users the most up-to-date technology.
- Worldwide access means teams can collaborate from widespread locations.
- Organizations can move more nimbly than competitors who must devote IT resources to managing infrastructure.
5 steps to the cloud
- Determine the goals your organization hopes to accomplish.
- Are you intent on migrating existing application workloads to the cloud?
- Maybe it is a workflow like email messaging moving from private application infrastructure to a Software as a Service hosted instance.
- Many organizations start with a hybrid model.
- Planning is critical to stay within time frame and budget strategic
- Which applications can be moved as-is, and which will have to be redesigned?
- If a redesign is required, what is the level of complexity and cost required?
- What services does the provider have to migrate legacy applications without reconfiguration?
- How long will it take to get the expected return on investment for each application?
- For applications where migration to the cloud should deliver sufficient ROI, which cloud model is best, public, private, or hybrid?
- How established is the provider, are their finances in order?
- Do they have the capability for the architecture you want to use?
- Does the provider have any tools to aid in the migration?
- Are there options to support legacy and unsupported systems ?
- What support is available to assist if problems are encountered?
- How will communications be provided to stakeholders?
- What staff and equipment will be required?
- What milestones need to be accomplished in what order to meet the end goal?
- How will data integrity and operational continuity be maintained through the migration?
- Will an outage be required?
- How will data integrity be maintained during the cut over?
- What risks need to be factored in.
- How will functionality be verified?
- How will you recover if something goes wrong?
- Who needs to approve the plan?
- When will the plan be executed?
- Communicate status to relevant stakeholders through each step of the process.
- Setup a role based access model providing appropriate rights to team members.
- Configure core services like Active Directory and DNS.
- Configure storage required to complete migration.
- Configure any databases required for the application.
- Stage the bulk of the data at the provider site via physical migration if needed.
- Setup VPC containers, required network connectivity and access
- Configure infrastructure, platform, or container depending on architecture.
- Connect applications to storage and databases.
- Install applications and apply configuration scripts.
- Complete data migration
- Run tests to verify application through appropriate burn in period
- Decommission old hardware and sanitize data.
- Document the architecture for continued maintenance and support.