Static versus dynamic cloud migration

It is 9:00 AM on a Wednesday. You are in the boardroom supplying a status update on the hottest migration project that will get rid of most of the vulnerabilities discovered through the latest pandemic. This is the third migration project, all a lot less than one hundred workloads and ten info sets. All have taken position in parallel, and all leverage different cloud migration groups.

Firm leadership notes that the metrics were being incredibly different in between the jobs. Project One reveals almost 80 p.c performance in phrases of code refactoring, tests, deployment, safety implementation, etc. The other folks were being nearer to thirty and 40 p.c. Why the variations?

Most performance issues occur from dynamic versus static migration ways and resources. Most men and women who presently do cloud migrations gravitate toward the precise procedures, ways, and migration resource suites that worked for previous jobs. This static tactic to cloud migration forces a precise set of procedures and resources on to a vast range of migration jobs and difficulty domains. The misuse of precise procedures and resources as generic answers frequently leads to failure.

Core to this difficulty is our generate to locate a precise suite of resources and technologies bundles that the industry considers very best-of-breed, and our need to leverage very best tactics. We in IT love to abide by the group: “I read about these resources and this tactic that worked for Joe and Jane and Bob at providers variety of like mine, so they’ll work for me, also.” We make the faulty assumption that we get rid of chance by not building our very own selections, even if the selections are situational.

As an specialist in this subject, I would love to checklist a conventional set of migration resources that will deal with everyone’s needs—code scanners, configuration administration, steady integration and growth, tests resources, and much more. But the true reply is that your selections of resources and ways must be primarily based on the requirements of the programs and databases you are migrating to public clouds–or any other system, for that make a difference.

The project criteria and overview procedures for migration jobs normally incorporate, but are not confined to:

“As is” system assessment
Software assessment
Information assessment
Configuration administration prepare
Safety migration resources
Governance migration resources
Refactoring and redeployment
CI/CD
Screening and deployment
Cloudops/IT functions
…and much more.

The resource categories listed earlier mentioned will have different answers primarily based on the “as is” and “to be” platforms, growth ways, and databases applied, as perfectly as the identified storage, safety, and governance requirements. Despite the fact that a a person-dimensions-suits-all tactic might work, it will hardly ever offer the promised efficiencies and could in fact derail the total project if the ways and resources are also significantly off.

My concept right here is that you have to have an added move in the process. Pick out the resources and ways primarily based on what you want to move, in which it requires to go, and the attributes it requires to have on arrival. Nearly often, this will generate the assortment of a different set of resources for just about every migration project.

The bottom-line concept is that the exact same resources and procedures can hardly ever be reused with optimal benefits from a person migration project to the upcoming.

Now it’s time to hear about the exceptions. To just take advantage of these exceptions, there requires to be centralized command and manage of all migrations, these as a middle of excellence in which difficulty designs and answers through just about every migration project can be documented. With centralized command and manage (CCC), your very own very best tactics will emerge, and they will have a significantly greater chance of functioning in future migration jobs.

This is the stage in the general organization migration in which some resources and procedures can start out to be reused. CCC requires to become component of the process when groups originally determine migration targets and start out migration plans. It ought to be CCC’s responsibility to examine and distinction prepared migration jobs with previous jobs. If CCC can recommend ways, resources, and procedures that worked for past migrations with very similar attributes, you will under no circumstances have to have to reinvent the wheel.

It is a difficult lesson to study. The silver lining right here is that even if a person dimensions hardly ever suits all, a several sizes can frequently in shape most. As often, the essential to results is to do your homework at the commencing rather of the stop of a project, doc every thing, and make that documentation quickly available to assist prepare future jobs.