For many businesses, moving their storage to the cloud can seem daunting, especially if they don’t have the in-house knowledge or skill set to understand what that entails and what success looks like. This is why a lot of organizations haven’t yet made the switch to cloud storage. According to figures from Eurostat, last year 40% of Belgian enterprises made use of cloud computing, and 55% of them are hosting the enterprise database(s).
It’s clear that there’s still a way to go before every company experiences the flexibility and innovation power of cloud computing. However, companies should not be put off by uncertainty, since the time to start thinking about migration to the cloud is now.
Well begun is half done
As in many aspects of our lives, a sound preparation is half the battle. To effectively get your dataset into the cloud and keep it up to date, you will absolutely need a migration plan. When building such a plan, keep in mind the 7 essential cloud storage migration rules:
1. Clean your data: investing time and energy into cleaning up your existing data beforehand will save you a lot of migration time and storage costs, even if it takes a few months to do your housekeeping. If you moved to a new house, you’d also thoroughly clean that, right? The same fundamentals apply when moving data.
2. Prioritize and focus on continuity: consider how to migrate your data with minimal disruption to your normal operation, at the lowest cost and over the shortest period of time. If your data becomes inaccessible during a migration, you risk impacting your business operations. The same is true as you continue to sync and update your systems after the initial migration takes place. Every workload element individually migrated should be proven to work in the new environment before migrating the next. You’ll also need to find a way to synchronize changes that are made to the source data while the migration is ongoing. The big cloud platforms provide built-in tools that aid in data migration. Moreover, in cloud storage environment solutions this comes as a built-in feature.
3. Choose your data migration tool: Moving your data to the cloud will require a tool that can carry out the migration. Thereby, transfer speed and security are important selection factors.
4. Select your cloud support partner: Given the steep learning curve and specifics of every cloud platform, you should consider partnering with a dedicated team of cloud specialists with expertise in the requirements of your project.
5. Control your storage: Choosing the right storage account based on performance and replication options is key, as well as being on the lookout for additional charges such as those related to storage transactions. Also, the type of data you consume defines the storage services you use. The right storage service can significantly increase your throughput based on the workload. It is also important to ensure that you can maintain compatibility with enterprise-grade products by investing in a tool that automates data movements in the cloud and provides operational insights and resource cost monitoring.
6. Protect your data: set a solid strategy to encrypt the at-rest data. Also, it’s advisable to identify data that is impacted by regulatory requirements so administrators can monitor and audit sensitive data during the cloud migration process.
7. back up everything: The fact remains that no matter how diligent you may be, migrations can go wrong. So be prepared and incrementally back up your current environment before starting the cloud migration. When it comes to cloud migration, it is better to be safe than sorry.
Haste makes waste
Businesses that don’t want to fall behind the competition should no longer hesitate to look into cloud migration. That said, there’s no reason to panic and outrun yourself on the cloud migration process. To make your migration a success, a step-by-step approach is essential. Take the time to develop a solid strategy, including a cloud flexibility and a cloud exit strategy. This way, you can easily move workloads between different hyperscalers, such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon, and you can avoid a cloud lock-in. Furthermore, determine which workloads will most benefit from the cloud even before you draw up your migration plan. This is essential information to design a customized migration roadmap, based on the steps above, and to form a migration team that can own your migration project from start to finish. By working carefully, you increase your chances of cashing in on the benefits of cloud storage considerably!
Would you rather not undertake the cloud migration journey on your own? Our experts are ready to support you in building a solid cloud migration plan. Contact them now.
