Application Migration - Deciding what to move in the cloud first and how, is headache for you?? This Checklist will Help You.

When you’re considering a cloud migration, you’re likely considering moving virtual machines (VMs) that may have been created over many years, by many teams, to support a huge range of applications. Moving these systems without breaking any team’s essential applications may seem daunting. It’ll require some knowledge of the applications in question to classify those apps before setting your migration plan.

Taking the time to truly understand your applications is a big part of success when migrating to the cloud. Picking the right applications to migrate first is key to building success and confidence within your organization in your cloud and migration strategy. Analyzing these details should help you and your IT team pick the right order for migrating your applications, which will be tantamount to achieving migration success

What’s the application status?

Here, we’re looking at all the components that factor into an application’s status within your organization’s landscape.

What is the criticality of application?

For example: How many users depend on it? What is the downtime sensitivity?

·       Tier 1 (highly important, 24x7 mission-critical)

·       Tier 2 (moderately important)

·       Tier 3 (low importance, dev/test)

What is the production level of this application?

·       In production

·       In staging

·       In development

·       In testing

What are the data considerations for this app?

·       Stateful data

·       Stateless data

·       Other systems reliant on this data set

How was this application developed?

·       Third-party purchase from major vendor (still in business?)

·       Third-party purchase from minor vendor (still in business?)

·       Written in-house (author still at company?)

·       Written by a partner (still in business? still a partner?)

What are this application’s operational standards?

For example: what organizational, business, or technological considerations exist?

·       Defined maintenance windows?

·       Defined SLAs?

·       Uptime-sensitive?

·       Latency-sensitive?

·       Accessed globally or regionally?

·       Deployed manually or via automation?

Guidance: Avoiding sensitive apps is often most desirable for a first migration.

What are the specific compliance or regulatory requirements?

·       ISO 27000?

·       PCI/DSS?

·       HIPAA?

·       EU Personal Data Protection?

·       GDPR?

Guidance: The fewer compliance or regulatory requirements, the better for a first migration.

What kind of documentation is readily available, and is it up-to-date?

·       System diagram?

·       Network diagram?

·       Data flow diagram?

·       Build/deploy docs?

·       Ongoing maintenance docs?

Guidance: The more docs that exist, the better!

What are the migration implications?

·       Easy to lift-and-shift as-is into the cloud

·       May require some refactoring

·       Need to modernize before migrating

·       Can wait to modernize after migrating

·       Need to rewrite in the cloud from scratch

Any business considerations?

·       Is this system used year-round or seasonally?

·       Is there a supportive line-of-business owner?

·       Does this app support an edge case or general use case?

·       Is this app managed by a central IT team or another team?

·       Would a downtime window be acceptable for this app?

Guidance: having more supportive owners and stakeholders is always crucial to the success of initial migrations.

What are the app integrations and dependencies?

Here, we’re going one step deeper, looking at how this application ties into all your other applications and workloads. This is hugely important, since you might want to group applications into the same migration sprint if they’re coupled together tightly through integrations or dependencies.

What are the interdependent applications?

·       SAP?

·       Citrix?

·       Custom or in-house apps?

Guidance: Fewer dependencies are ideal.

What are the interdependent workflows?

·       Messaging?

·       Monitoring?

·       Maintenance/management?

·       Analytics?

Guidance: Fewer dependencies are ideal.

Where is the database and storage located?

·       Separate servers?

·       Co-located servers?

·       Is storage block- or file-level?

Any other services to analyze?

·       Web services?

·       RPC used either inbound or outbound?

·       Backup services (and locations) in effect?

Guidance: None of these are more or less ideal, simply something to be aware of.

Other questions to ask:

·       Unique dependencies?

·       Manual processes required?

·       Synchronized downtime/uptime (with other apps)?

Guidance: The goal for first apps to migrate is to minimize complexity and labor.

Taking the time to truly understand your applications is a big part of success when migrating to the cloud. Picking the right applications to migrate first is key to building success and confidence within your organization in your cloud and migration strategy. Analyzing these details should help you and your IT team pick the right order for migrating your applications, which will be tantamount to achieving migration success.