Table Of ContentFACILITATING THE SPREAD OF KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATION IN PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
Cloud Migration
eMag Issue 33 - October 2015
ARTICLE INTERVIEW ARTICLE
The Cloud-Migration Anatomy of a Cloud Transitioning to Cloud-
Checklist Migration Program: Native Applications
Cloud Migration // eMag Issue 33 - Oct 2015 1
The Cloud-Migration Checklist
Are you in the process of moving applications to a public cloud? You’re not alone. 451 Research says
that 46% of 2015 IT budgets are going towards off-premises systems, with that number expected
to climb to over 50% within the next three years. In this article, we’ll explore four stages in a cloud
migration lifecycle and the questions to answer before exiting each one.
Anatomy of a Cloud Migration
Program: Q&A with Tim Beerman
Many cloud providers offer services to onboard new customers into the
cloud. What advice can they give us on how to prepare for a migration,
what pitfalls to avoid, and what types of apps are the best fit for the
cloud? To learn more, InfoQ reached out to Tim Beerman, the VP of
Product Strategy and Development at CenturyLink.
Transitioning to Cloud-Native
Applications and Beyond
Enterprises have continued to accelerate their adoption of
cloud infrastructures. As this shift continues, it is important
to understand what this means to applications that run in
cloud environments.
Why You Should Definitely Migrate
Existing Apps to the Cloud
In this article we’ll explore various benefits of migrating your existing apps to the cloud in
detail so that you can make an informed decision.
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Conference for Professional Software Developers
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Tracks for QCon London 2016
• Architectures You’ve Always Wondered • DevOps & CI/CD - Lessons/stories on optimiz-
about - Case studies from: Google, Linkedin, ing the deployment pipeline
Alibaba, Twitter, and more...
• Security, Incident Response & Fraud Detec-
• Disrupting Finance - Technology advances tion - Master-level classes on building security
in fi nance (blockchain, P2P, Machine Learning, into your system and responding to incidents
API’s) when things go wrong.
• Data Streaming @ Scale with Spark - Big • Head-to-Tail Functional Languages - Free-
data, fast-moving data. Practical implemena- range Monads, Tackling immutablity, tales
tion lessons on Real-time Data with Spark from production, and more...
• Close to the Metal - Get effi ciency back into • Data Science & Machine Learning Meth-
your code, concepts like: cache effi cient algo- ods - A developer’s data science and machine
rithm and lock free data structures learning toolkit
• Modern Native Languages - Modern native • Optimizing You - Keeping life in balance is al-
languages: Safe effi ciency with Go, Rust, Swift ways a challenge. Learning lifehacks
• Containers (in production) - Real-world les- • Microservices for Mega-Architectures -
sons on scalability and reliability in produc- Practical lessons on Microservices success.
tion container deployments
• Architecting for Failure - Your system will fail.
• Modern CS in the real world - Real-world In- Take control before it takes you with it
dustry adoption of modern CS ideas
• Modern Agile Development - Revisiting Ag-
• Full Stack Javascript - Level up Javascript ile today and tackling challenges we are see-
with topics like Angular, React/ReactNative, ing in the wild
Node, Mongo/Couch/Other, Falcor, GraphQL,
• 21st Century Culture - New ways to organise
etc
technology companies and workplace culture
RICHARD is the VP of Product for
CenturyLink, a Microsoft
SEROTER
MVP for Integration, Pluralsight
trainer, lead InfoQ.com editor for cloud computing,
frequent public speaker, and author of multiple
books on application integration strategies.
Richard maintains a regularly updated blog on
topics of architecture and solution design and can
be found on Twitter as @rseroter.
A LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
Countless surveys show that companies are considerations for planning out workload migra-
steadily moving applications from on-premis- tions.
es to cloud environments. While it’s easy to get This eMag has four major topics:
excited about deploying brand new apps to the 1 A cloud migration checklist that takes you
cloud, the reality is that most companies have through the multiple phases of a migration
on-premises data centers full of existing applica- project, with key considerations for each
tions that could benefit from a cloud migration. phase.
These migrations often seem straightfor- 2 Guidance on transitioning to a cloud-native
ward -- just pick up the virtual machines and mindset and deploying apps that can take
move them into a cloud! Inevitably, complexities the most benefit of a cloud environment.
surface and cast doubt on the entire endeavor. 3 A look at the types of applications that make
There’s so much more to a cloud migration than sense for the cloud.
a basic lift-and-shift exercise. 4 An interview with a team that regularly mi-
How do you assess your application portfo- grates complex customers to cloud environ-
lio and identify the candidates for cloud? What ments.
apps should you avoid migrating? How can you As you read this eMag, you may see slight
decide on the right cloud environment for a giv- variations for your own use case, but hopefully
en app? Is it better to move apps incrementally much of the guidance resonates and provides
or via a “big bang” exercise? What pitfalls should actionable data to help you be more successful
you look out for? InfoQ decided to investigate in your transition.
this topic further and share our findings. In this
eMag, you’ll find practical advice from leading
practitioners in cloud. Discover new ideas and
4 Cloud Migration // eMag Issue 33 - Oct 2015
Read online on InfoQ
The Cloud-Migration Checklist
by Richard Seroter
Are you in the process of moving applications to a public cloud? You’re
not alone. In its fourth-quarter 2014 “Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud
Computing”, 451 Research said that 46% of 2015 IT budgets would go
towards off-premises systems, with that number expected to climb to
over 50% within three years.
Organizations still purchase starts all over, potentially with and not all of them fit your
cloud services in order to save different technologies and ob- specific needs. One cloud
money, but increasingly iden- jectives. While the below check- may offer thousands of
tify strategic goals like “time to list may help you start your jour- virtual servers in seconds,
market”, “improved availability”, ney, it’s important to personalize which is wonderful if you
and “establishing new revenue it to your particular situation! are among the organizations
streams” as primary drivers of that need such a capability.
Assessment
adoption. A recent survey that Another could deliver white-
showed that only 27% of partic- There is no “one size fits all” cloud glove managed services that
ipants were extremely satisfied service. Many organizations try may or may not be relevant
with their cloud-migration ex- to identify a preferred cloud en- to your mode of operation.
perience indicates that there’s vironment before understanding Consider what matters most
clearly room to discuss how to how that cloud matches their to your organization, and
introduce cloud services into organization’s maturity, culture, actively try out a handful
your IT portfolio and successful- and application portfolio. What of providers that fit the bill.
ly transition apps or data to the questions should you ask of Don’t just blindly choose a
new environment. yourself and the candidate pro- leader in a particular cloud
To be sure, any migration viders? domain and accidentally
is never truly “done”. As you con- • Are you the right fit for this choose a provider that ham-
stantly hire new services to solve cloud? There are countless pers your ability to deliver
business problems, the cycle providers of cloud services, services successfully.
Cloud Migration // eMag Issue 33 - Oct 2015 5
• What are your capacity de- in business for more than a may introduce unforeseen
mands? Based on the type month, you probably have latency. If your applications
of workloads you’re consid- an existing set of tools and have integration points with
ering for the cloud, different processes that you’ve grown on-premises systems that do
providers may bubble to the accustomed to using. If you not migrate to the cloud, you
top. Is your application port- can’t easily adapt your tools may also see performance
folio bursting with modern, to the candidate cloud envi- problems due to long-dis-
cloud-native applications ronments, make sure you’re tance connections. Cloud
that capitalize on thousands comfortable replacing the servers come in all shapes
of cheap, ephemeral servers status quo with the toolset and sizes, so make sure that
or containers? Do you need supported by the cloud ven- you give your applications
a relatively slow-growing dor. the necessary CPU, memo-
pool of a few hundred du- ry, and disk horsepower to
Planning
rable compute resources? meet or exceed their historic
Consider your application Congratulations, you’ve picked performance levels.
landscape and make sure a cloud provider for a particular • What are the hybrid-inte-
that providers can support business domain. Now comes gration plans? It’s unrealistic
your upper bounds of com- the hard part: planning a migra- to think that you’ll move an
pute, storage, and network tion! What are the most import- entire application portfolio
throughput. ant things to consider when plot- to the cloud at once, or may-
• What are the actual ting out the migration strategy? be ever. Treat the cloud as a
costs? The cost of cloud is • What are the candidate logical extension to your ex-
rarely the easily calculated apps/workloads/environ- isting landscape and consid-
number you see in the price ments? Ideally, the first ap- er how you will extend your
list. Make sure to model re- plications you move to the current data, network, and
al-life scenarios and look for cloud aren’t the trickiest, identity to the cloud.
special charges the provider most business-critical ones. • Have you identified the first
may apply based on geog- But either way, make sure adopters? A migration to the
raphy, backup storage, con- that you do a comprehensive cloud can be disruptive, and
sumed bandwidth, API calls, inventory of applications it’s important to find people
and more. Also, don’t forget and indicate those that are within the organization who
to factor in costs for on- the best fit — strategically or are eager to help define new
boarding programs, support tactically — for a cloud envi- standards and guide the or-
plans, and net new environ- ronment. ganization through this im-
ments (e.g. performance • What’s the topology of portant transition.
testing, staging) that didn’t the application architec- • How will users access the en-
exist on premises. ture? There’s a good chance vironment? Your co-workers
• Where are the gaps, and that your application ar- probably already have too
are they still gaps after mi- chitecture will differ in the many passwords to manage.
gration? It’s likely that you’ll cloud. Cloud servers, data The last thing you want to do
finish your first assessment services, and networks be- is add an entirely new set of
of cloud providers and have have differently than their complex credentials neces-
a list of perceived or actual on-premises counterparts, sary to access a critical set of
deficiencies. It’s important so you may need to evolve cloud services. Look at single
to talk about those with the your reference architecture sign-on (SSO) mechanisms
provider and see if there are and deployment process in offered by your cloud ven-
plans to close those gaps or order to fit in this new world. dors and make this an up-
viable workarounds to those • What possible performance front aspect of any project to
gaps. One possible work- bottlenecks are being intro- adopt a cloud service.
around is that the infrastruc- duced? Does moving to the • How will you train staff? It’s
ture or application pattern cloud guarantee an instant important for your team to
that caused the gap is refac- boost in application perfor- become deeply familiar with
tored to fit more natively into mance? Absolutely not. If these new cloud services.
the cloud’s defined model. you take a monolithic appli- Consider each audience (e.g.
• What’s the fit for your ex- cation and distribute its parts project managers, develop-
isting tools? If you’ve been among cloud services, you ers, architectures, system
6 Cloud Migration // eMag Issue 33 - Oct 2015
administrators) and tailor users can tolerate a pro- this data over your Internet
materials that help staff get longed downtime while a connection. For large data
comfortable in the cloud. migration occurs, you may sets, however, you might be
• What internal processes pursue a simple, yet disrup- incurring significant band-
have to change in order to tive cutover plan. However, if width charges from your
capitalize on the new ser- you want to minimize down- cloud provider and long
vice? Your documented time, you will have to con- transfer times. In those cases,
procedures for hardware sider strategies where you it’s better to either compress
requisition, change manage- set up the new environment the data and copy it to a
ment, testing, and deploy- and keep it in sync with the staging location in the target
ments may not apply in the primary environment until cloud before transferring it
same way when using cloud the time comes to steer all to the final destination or to
services. If you attempt to traffic to the new instance. physically ship drives to the
overlay current processes on • How will financial process- cloud provider (if they sup-
more agile, self-service envi- ing occur? Yes, you’ll proba- port that).
ronments, you may lose all bly have to pay for your cloud • What security controls are in
the benefits that you were usage. How will you do that? place during transit? During
after in the first place. Do an Do you plan on charging the migration, you may end
honest assessment of the each business unit that con- up using staging servers or
changes that you need to sumes cloud resources or temporary object storage re-
make. simply pay the entire bill out positories. Make sure you’ve
• How will you deploy up- of a general fund? Make sure thought through the data
dated code, data, and con- to think through the process and access security consid-
figurations to the envi- of incurring charges, getting erations, especially for sensi-
ronment? Your new cloud an invoice, and making a tive data.
service may work with your payment. • Migrate virtual ma-
existing system-administra- • Have you completed a small- chines. Moving entire VMs
tion tools, or it may not. If scale pilot that flexes all the is one way to migrate an
you’re using modern config- above concerns? Above all, application to the cloud.
uration-management tools don’t go into a migration There can be unexpected
like Chef or Ansible, you may with only paper prototypes. side effects, depending on
find extensions that work Physically set up applications how the VM was attached
seamlessly with your cloud in the target cloud and do to the on-premises network,
destination. Make sure that trial runs. Get familiar with the domain it was part of,
you do a thorough simula- the interface, capabilities, the types of drives used,
tion of the deployment and and constraints so that you and more. While a “lift and
configuration process and develop hands-on expertise. shift” of VMs often appears
identify any areas that need to be the easiest route to
Migration
improvement. the cloud, it’s often more
• What’s the plan for operat- With proper planning, the migra- complex than expected.
ing this service after migra- tion itself should be uneventful. Additionally, that sort of ap-
tion? The migration is only To be sure, surprises will invari- proach doesn’t force you to
the start of that application’s ably surface when the actual mi- reconsider your application
new life in the cloud. What gration is underway but, if you’ve architecture and strategic
happens when a change is answered the above questions, ways to refactor your appli-
needed? How do you trou- your team should be equipped cation for the cloud.
bleshoot a problem? What to handle the unexpected. • Migrate data. Your data may
monitoring hooks will you • How are you distributing move to a database-as-a-ser-
use to measure key perfor- the apps and data to the vice environment, or a
mance indicators? Look at cloud environment? There self-managed database in-
the full lifecycle of a cloud are a handful of ways to get stance. Make sure you know
workload and consider all your applications and data which tools are provided by
the care-and-feeding activi- up to a cloud location. For the vendor and what limita-
ties. moderately sized workloads, tions exist regarding data
• Do you have a strategy for you can often use simple volume or structure.
cutover? If your application copy commands and pass
Cloud Migration // eMag Issue 33 - Oct 2015 7
• Migrate applications. If your application
deployment tool can natively point to
cloud infrastructure, containers, or applica-
tion platforms, you’re in good shape. You’re
also probably in the minority! It may take
some reconfiguration to get your on-prem-
ises tools to deploy code to the cloud, or
you might evaluate new tools to make the
process more seamless.
• Recreate metadata. Companies often say
that they want portability in the cloud and
seek to avoid lock-in with a particular ven-
dor. Good luck with that. While assets like
virtual machines and application code can
move relatively freely between clouds, en-
vironment metadata is often very provider
specific. Account structures, users, permis-
sions, policies, load balancers, and the like
vary from cloud to cloud. Make sure you
know how to set up the supporting con-
figurations for your particular cloud desti-
nation.
• Validation
• Once the migration is completed, it’s criti-
cal to verify that all aspects of the applica-
tion are performing as expected.
• Is the application reachable? A simple test,
but it’s vital to check out all the various ap-
plication services and make sure that users
can access them and that internal compo-
nents can communicate without error.
• Did all the data make its way into the en-
vironment? Through automation — or, at
worst, a manual spot check — verify that
both transaction data and reference data
successfully transferred to the cloud. If you
have complex data relationships, one failed
migration can cause a cascading problem.
• Can administrative tools access the cloud
environment? You hopefully verified this
during your planning phase, but here’s one
last chance to validate that all of the man-
agement tools can see the cloud applica-
tion and monitor it with no issue.
Summary
Every day, organizations are successfully
adopting cloud services and breathing new
life into their IT portfolio by migrating applica-
tions to a more agile environment. Unrealistic
expectations are a leading source of migration
frustration. The best way to avoid this angst is
to seriously evaluate your organization’s goals
and readiness, and answer practical questions
about the planned migration process.
8
Read online on InfoQ
Anatomy of a Cloud Migration Program:
Q&A with Tim Beerman
by Richard Seroter
Tim Beerman is vice president of product strategy and development at CenturyLink, focusing
on platform migration and onboarding strategy. Having joined CenturyLink in 2008, Tim
has held senior leadership positions and has been responsible for world-class infrastructure
products and application solutions that serve as the backbone of the company’s managed
hosting initiatives. Most recently, he drove the strategy to implement CenturyLink’s managed-
services suite of products in the core CenturyLink Cloud, laying the foundation for a broad range
of future managed services under a single unified platform.
Many cloud providers offer services to bring new customers into the
cloud. What advice can they give us on how to prepare for a migration
and what pitfalls to avoid? To learn more, InfoQ reached out to Tim
Beerman, a VP of strategy and development at CenturyLink.
customer relationship: 1) gener- I like to use the analogy
What things besides migration
al platform introduction and ex- that a good onboarding pro-
are part of cloud “onboard-
pectation/goal setting (i.e. What gram should “teach the custom-
ing”?
does the customer want to ac- er how to fish” so they learn how
complish through onboarding?); to be self-sufficient using the
Tim Beerman: “Onboarding” is a 2) account configuration and self-service capabilities avail-
very broad term that can mean hands-on training to accomplish able to them. Of course, differ-
a lot of different things to dif- the goals defined in step 1; and ent customers may have differ-
ferent audiences. In general, a 3) a thorough closure session ent requirements based on the
successful platform onboarding where the customer understands scale of their operation, so the
program will accomplish three how to engage the platform sup- onboarding program should be
primary goals, all culminating in port model and what tools and able to accommodate as appro-
a delightful customer experience KBs are available to them for con- priate versus a “one size fits all”
that extends throughout the tinued learning and updates. approach.
Cloud Migration // eMag Issue 33 - Oct 2015 9
they will be operating within. is best to move the app and ap-
Which aspects of migration an That being said, this is where a plication tier first (the web tier is
be faster than expected? Slow- strong onboarding program real- usually pretty straight forward)
er? ly shines as it provides an avenue because if any problems are en-
for customers to learn the ins and countered that are not a result of
Obviously, there are a lot of vari- outs of their new platform with the separation, it is easier to fail
ables that come into play in a some professional guidance as that tier back to the source ver-
migration and it is largely de- they get started. sus re-synching the database.
pendent on the complexity of How does your team val-
the environment. The one aspect idate that a migration was suc-
of migrations that can often be cessful?
slower than expected is the up- Validation is an important
What types of apps do you dis-
front planning. Many people courage a company from mi- final step in the migration pro-
believe that they can just pick grating? cess. In fact, throughout the entire
up an image and start the mi- migration process, certain steps
gration process and turn every- have their own validations such
thing up on the destination plat- Applications that have a trans- as checksums on data transfers
form. There are a lot of things to actional reliance on data sourc- for individual components. Usu-
consider as you start the process, es (i.e. databases, mainframes, ally, once the new environment is
including such things as licens- etc.) that are not proximate to built out, both environments will
ing, IP addressing, performance the cloud location may not be run in parallel (one in production
differences in how the exiting good candidates for migration. and the other for testing) for a
application may perform in the Also, some applications that given period of time to ensure
destination, etc. Careful plan- are designed for physical server the application works properly
ning and consideration of these implementations versus virtu- and performs as expected before
elements up front can save a lot al are not good candidates for the final cutover. Once satisfied,
of time and effort on the back cloud migration as HA schemes we work with the customer on
end. One thing that can often be may not work properly, perfor- a final data synchronization and
faster than most people expect is mance may be impacted due cutover of the production envi-
the actual build-out of the des- to such things as storage types ronment while keeping the origi-
tination site. With proper use of (FC vs. iSCSI or NFS), or licensing nal in place for further validation
available automation and tools, may not be compatible. This, of period. Of course, smaller or less
the general configuration goes course, may not be an issue if complex environments may not
quite quickly depending on the your cloud provider offers phys- need this diligence and cutover
migration method employed. ical servers as part of their cloud and validation can happen very
platform (shameless plug :) ). quickly. In all cases, we rely on
the customer to give the thumbs
up that they are happy in their
new home and support them as
Are you seeing that organiza-
tions start migrating on their Do you typically move an en- necessary to make that determi-
own first and then get help, or tire system (e.g. web, app, da- nation.
start out being guided by oth- tabase servers) to the cloud or
ers? just a subset? If a subset, how
do you avoid negative perfor-
Many customers migrating to mance impact? How does migration to a SaaS
a cloud are doing so for the or PaaS platform differ from
self-service flexibility offered This largely depends on the over- moving to an IaaS environ-
by cloud platforms. As a result, all size and complexity of the en- ment?
many choose to migration on vironment and latency between
their own, especially if good doc- source and destination. Whenev- SaaS and PaaS migrations have
umentation and migration tools er possible, it is best to move the their own unique challenges,
such as image import are readily entire stack — and if latency be- but the primary difference from
available and easy to use on the tween locations is an issue, it be- IaaS is that all the hardware is
destination platform. This gives comes a requirement. If latency abstracted so you are largely just
them a great opportunity to re- is not a big issue and it becomes dealing with environment con-
ally understand the platform that necessary to break it up, then it figurations and data transfer. If
10 Cloud Migration // eMag Issue 33 - Oct 2015
