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Community Blog What Is Cloud Migration

What Is Cloud Migration

Cloud migration refers to the enterprise's migration from traditional platforms to cloud platforms.

Cloud Migration Introduction

Compared with traditional application platforms, the advantages of cloud computing platforms lie in powerful computing capabilities, storage capabilities, diversified services, and high-cost performance.

Before implementing a cloud migration, you need to take a step back, evaluate the correctness of the implementation of cloud migration, and determine that the migration to cloud computing is meaningful for your business. This is very important. It is not enough for cloud computing to become a fashion.

Assuming you already have a private cloud, then why would you want to increase the capacity of the public cloud? It may be because you want to expand your disaster recovery (DR) options by running workloads from different geographic locations. Or because you want to increase the workload, but you are limited by the capacity in the data center you own. Or maybe it is because of economic considerations that you choose to implement a hybrid cloud computing model. Public cloud can convert capital expenditures into operating capital in terms of pay-as-you-use, and free users from unpleasant leasing and tedious upgrades.

Your IT organizations at all levels need to understand the fundamental purpose and reasons of this cloud migration so that your organization can make the right decision.

Similarly, it is also very important to include all IT teams in these plans, including application, system, network, and storage administrators. Their expertise is the key to solid preparations for implementing hybrid cloud computing.

What Are the Types of Clouds

Public Cloud

Public cloud is a cloud infrastructure provisioned for use by the general public, individuals, or businesses. Essentially, third-party public cloud providers lease servers within a virtual environment, which is accessible over Internet. Users can then access these servers by purchasing public cloud services such as cloud servers, data storage, and other cloud-related services.

Private Cloud

Different from public cloud, a private cloud is a model of cloud computing that provides a dedicated cloud environment to a single organization. Private cloud can be operated internally by an in-house IT team, behind that organization’s firewall, so an organization has more control of its computing resources. Private cloud is mainly used by enterprises, so it is also considered a type of enterprise cloud.

Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid cloud is a cloud computing model that combines one or more public cloud and private cloud environments through a network connection, which allows for sharing of data and applications between the different cloud environments. Hybrid cloud is a cloud computing model that combines one or more public cloud and private cloud environments through a network connection, which allows for sharing of data and applications between the different cloud environments.

Cloud Migration Precautions

The data that has been packaged must be absolutely static and rarely used. The idea is to avoid packaging costs by sending the item first; then, find what is needed and use it for updates.

Apply data footprint restoration technology. Copy the data, compress it, and then archive it as packaged data. Most vendors provide different methods to get your data into their services. There are some network restrictions at this time, but if you have sufficient budget, you can directly connect at a high speed, and you can move a large amount of data in a short period of time.

How to Plan a Cloud Migration?

Consider the application or data

Although cloud migration has significantly enhanced flexibility and scalability, making it seem like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, not every application is suitable for moving to the cloud. Traditional applications, mission-critical workloads and sensitive data, such as credit card information, may not be suitable for public clouds. However, if you want to enjoy the benefits of cloud computing without compromising mission-critical information, companies can use private or hybrid clouds.

Assessment cost

Many organizations will migrate to the cloud because it is more cost-effective. Cloud migration reduces the cost of hardware and IT staff. However, the financial benefits are different for each application. Any application that randomly increases or decreases in demand levels, such as mobile applications, will generate a greater return on investment when migrating to the cloud. But applications that use traditional enterprise hardware, such as earlier versions of Oracle's database, may be more expensive when running in the cloud.

Choose your cloud preferences

Applications and costs account for a large proportion of an organization's consideration of cloud migration. But choosing the right cloud environment is equally important. Although public, private, and hybrid clouds have their own advantages, companies must decide which model best meets their needs.

Reflections on management and safety

Cloud migration usually affects an organization's management strategy. For example, management methods that are effective for traditional local systems will no longer be useful for the cloud. At the same time, as organizations migrate data to the public cloud, corporate control decreases, and more responsibility falls on the cloud provider. Therefore, enterprises must adjust their management strategies to reduce their reliance on internal security controls and rely more on the products of cloud providers. Companies must also ensure that the provider’s certification is up to date.

Ready to accept the cloud-to-cloud migration challenge

Cloud migration is not just a shift from local to cloud, it may also be a data migration from one cloud to another. These cloud-to-cloud migrations include moving from one provider to another, as well as migration between private and public clouds. However, the migration process from private cloud to public cloud can be difficult.

Develop your cloud migration strategy

Once you have considered the challenges of data, cost, security, and cloud-to-cloud migration, it's time to come up with a specific implementation plan for the migration. An important aspect of this plan is to decide how to deal with the legacy products of local technology. In some cases, a company can re-adjust the hardware to prevent them from being just contaminated with dust.

The views expressed herein are for reference only and don't necessarily represent the official views of Alibaba Cloud.

Related Blog

Alibaba Cloud Migration Tool: Server Migration Center

Cloud computing has been the center of any organizations operations and has opened cheaper, reliable and more progressive ways to get the job done. In this era of advanced and high-end computing needs, centralized resource computing once was the flagbearer of computing needs. However, since the time cloud computing came along, the distributed computing cycle has made operations and implementation a much less tedious task.

Alibaba Cloud has held a position of a prime mover in the field of distributed computing needs. It offers solutions that are tailored fit for most industry practices and trends. Alibaba Simple Application Server is one of such solutions that enable the users to host their applications with one touch deployment scenarios.

How to Use the Alibaba Cloud Migration Tool

Seamless integration is what we all expect when it comes to information technology, especially with migration. However, this is easier said than done. Cloud migration is fairly complicated because it involves so many elements, from picking a suitable operating system (OS) to selecting the best geographical region for our deployments. Migration also involves some standard processes and considerations as there is no small feat.

Migration strategy differs from case to case basis, however as a whole, cloud migration should be based on best practices from previous examples. An effective migration strategy should maintain a reliable, real-time migration, with less or zero down time. Migration can be broadly categorized into physical to virtual (cloud migration), virtual to virtual (multi-cloud), and virtual to physical (hybrid cloud). Migration can have any combination of these categories.

Related Product

Cloud Migration

Alibaba Cloud offers comprehensive services and resources to ensure a smooth migration. Users can choose to migrate their data to Alibaba Cloud through self-guided materials, or opt to outsource their migration to either Alibaba Cloud's Migration Service or a trusted Alibaba Cloud Partner.

Database Migration

Migrating to fully managed cloud databases brings a host of benefits including scalability, reliability, and cost-efficiency. However, doing so without the necessary tooling can be as challenging as navigating without a map. Explore Alibaba Cloud's portfolio of fully managed database services, and learn how to leverage a rich set of utility tools and our database expert services to turn your migration experience into a hassle-free expressway.

Web Hosting Migration

Web hosting migration is one of the most common scenarios in cloud migration. The migration can be done partially for a hybrid cloud solution, or performed completely for a fully cloud-hosted website or web application. Alibaba Cloud helps you speed up this process and minimize errors with our various migration tools.

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