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Home › AWS › Best Practices for Migrating Data to the Cloud
Home › AWS › Best Practices for Migrating Data to the Cloud

Best Practices for Migrating Data to the Cloud

September 08, 2020
Cloud Data Migration

The benefits of having organizations move data to the cloud are well known. By moving to the cloud, companies can improve performance, create a flexible environment for storage, scale, and realize cost savings.

However, you can’t just press a button and migrate your data in the cloud. Adopting the cloud means first having a strategy for your business that includes detailing how you will use the cloud. Only then can you start planning how you will get your data off on-premise storage and into the cloud.

That’s why it’s crucial to work with a cloud consulting service with expertise in performing a data migration in the cloud. This article will review the best practices for migrating data. Proper strategy, tools, experience with the migration process are some of the critical components.

The cloud ecosystem can be a great thing for businesses. But it’s also tough to navigate, especially when you’re trying an end-to-end migration without the right experience to pull it off.

Here are some thoughts on how to make the entire transition much more manageable when migrating your data to the cloud.

Create a Cloud Data Migration Strategy

The first thing your organization must do is create a cloud data migration strategy. That process starts by creating a plan that will demonstrate how you’ll be using the cloud. You’ll want to identify all your stakeholders, develop a roadmap of processes to follow, and consider everything that needs to go into the migration.

If you fail to do this, you’re putting your entire project at risk before you start. You can run into problems before, during or after the migration, including having people on your team fail to adapt. Your plan will reinforce the importance of the migration and what the expectations are for your organization.

There are many strategies your organization can use. At Kanda Software, we prefer our custom “Move and Improve” strategy. We can accelerate time to value and minimize your risk because the strategy is tailored to your unique business issues. We also factor in the long and short-term strategic goals and objectives you have.

A proper analysis includes reviewing crucial issues like:

  • Business objectives and constraints
  • Application cloud fit
  • Migration readiness
  • Resource constraints
  • Application constraints
  • Cost-benefit analysis by application
  • Vendor and ecosystem selection

In our analysis phase, we’ll review the application architecture, dependencies and impacts of the constraints. That allows us to create a detailed recommendation plan for workloads and applications you can migrate and others that need to be re-engineered.

Beware of Data Migration Challenges

The data migration process incorporates everything we do in the planning and analysis phase. You’ll know exactly what data is a cloud migration candidate as is, and what needs to be re-engineered to be ready.

Further, you’ll have your roadmap and migration plan, and the migration schedule will be ready. Your cloud design will be completed, whether you are are using a private cloud, shared cloud, public cloud or another cloud service.

All of the planning is important because there are several data migration challenges and risks. Those risks include data loss. A small or sizeable catastrophic loss is not unheard of if you are working with inexperienced vendors. Sometimes the data can go missing, and no one will know until a user or app needs it.

Compatibility issues are another risk. Your organization can experience problems with the data transfer with operating systems, file formats, user success rights between the source and target systems, and more.

Other risks include downtown, cost overruns, missed deadlines, and poor performance. These types of issues can occur when organizations use inexperienced vendors or try migrating in-house.

The Data Migration Process is Critical to Success

There are ways to avoid challenges, and that’s by using a data migration process that has worked repeatedly.

For example, when you work with us, we work with your end-users. They help us understand data rules, definitions, compliance issues, and what your data priorities are.

You’ll need to audit source databases before any migrations. While storage migration is not as difficult, you’ll still have to review your data to ensure a seamless migration. There’s also obsolete files, old email accounts you never use anymore, and outdated user accounts that need to be deleted.

Backing up data is critical, so you don’t lose it. Finally, after you’ve done your migrations, you can administer some final tests to make sure everything is correct. Then you can shut down your legacy systems and start utilizing your new cloud storage system.

Data Migration Tools are Important

During the deployment phase, you’ll need applications and software to ensure a successful migration.

The apps and software help guarantee security as you move precious data to the cloud and make the process less costly.

Our clients use customized services tailored to their migration. Those services include SQL or no-SQL databases, application monitoring, transactional storage, archival storage and analytical apps and software. The software apps are used on dark data, protect your databases and sync the source and target databases, so they’re operating in real-time.

Data Warehouse Migrations can be Tricky

One type of migration can be more complicated than others. When you are migrating your data warehouse to the cloud, the process may require more time and resources than other migrations.

Strategy and planning are critical when moving that much data. You’ll need to work with an experienced vendor who can:

  • Minimize your migration risks
  • Handle security issues
  • Help you understand the costs involved
  • Answer questions on performance

Data warehouse migration can take significantly longer, depending on how much data you need to move. That’s why you must work with an experienced team. We can give our clients accurate estimates, which helps them avoid unnecessary downtime.

Final Thoughts

Migrations can be stressful, but once you finish, you can move into the phase where you worry about optimization, automation and management.

It’s at this point where you can continue to reduce your costs. We can make it cost-efficient to move to private, hybrid or public environments like AWS, GCP and Azure.

So let us navigate the assess your organization’s readiness and perform the complex migration for you. That’s how you ultimately maximize your ROI on your cloud migration investment.

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