Posted on 29.5.2020

Cloud migration cookbook – Why you should consider migrating to UpCloud

Migrate to UpCloud

For many businesses, there comes a time when the old infrastructure solutions or service providers become a limiting factor in the potential growth of the business. Be it ageing self-hosted hardware, limited capabilities of a hosting provider, or simply a need for better service, you are likely to begin evaluating your options. If you are still looking around, we want to make the case for migrating to UpCloud. However, before making any decisions, you should get familiar with what’s involved in migration.

Moving data, applications and IT processes require a lot of preparation and advance work which in turn demands a good understanding of the challenges involved from the business management. Regardless of whether you are looking to move from on-premise hosting or from one cloud provider to another, migrating will be a big step not taken lightly. Therefore, in this post, we are:

  • outlining the migration processes
  • listing the benefits you might strive for
  • and looking into the costs of migration

With this knowledge, we hope to help you decide on migrating to UpCloud!

How cloud migration works

Many modern businesses run on data and just about everything operations related is hosted on servers. This creates both advantages in not being tied to specific hardware and challenges in migrating large amounts of data and services while ensuring operational security. The goal at the end of it all is switching production from the old provider to the new. But before then, there are a few things that require careful consideration.

A large portion of the time and effort during migration will go to moving data from one storage location to another. And in many cases, while new data continues to accumulate. Although data is likely all digital and thus downloadable over the Internet, it will need to have the supporting infrastructure and services to enable large transfers. Depending on the network links at both sending and receiving ends, large quantities of data will require time to be transferred. If possible, it can be advantageous to plan migrating data via replication to maintain synchronization until the switchover. That brings us to the second part of the migration process, deploying software and services.

Cloud infrastructure offers a lot of flexibility in building the necessary platform to facilitate migrating data to the cloud. It’s not necessary or even always possible to use the same software and services when making major changes to the infrastructure such as during migration. However, this can offer an opportunity to migrate old processes onto a newer software stack. Besides, if the old solution relied on proprietary software it’s also worth considering a move to open-source alternatives. In any case, the new infrastructure needs to be able to accommodate all the necessary software and services for rebuilding the business processes.

Therefore the third important part to take into account are the differences in infrastructure when planning the migration. The changes in moving to a new production environment will likely include variations in features and services between cloud providers. While some providers might offer proprietary services, the same functions are often readily available as open-source alternatives. There are also possible differences in storage and networking solutions which may require changes in the old business processes to adapt to the new infrastructure. As such, the best way to start tackling a migration of any scale is to begin by getting familiar with the potential new cloud provider.

Having a solid knowledge of the many moving variables in the migration process will undoubtedly prove useful. With a solid foundation for planning the move, you can attain the tools and expertise needed to manage the migration.

Benefits of migrating to UpCloud

If an old hosting provider simply can no longer support the increasing demand every business wants to see, it’s a high time to find a better solution. Depending on your old infrastructure, there might be several benefits up for grabs. These can include faster servers, greater flexibility, higher uptime, better customer support, as well as cost savings. Let’s have a look at how these can be achieved.

Cloud server performance is never as straightforward as simply comparing CPU models or benchmark results. The overall performance relies on many factors such as storage speeds, host machine loads as well as possible computational quotas. Our MaxIOPS storage technology paired with top-of-the-line enterprise CPUs provides an advantage for many types of use cases. Therefore, it’s always best to evaluate the real-world performance yourself and not rely entirely on benchmarks.

Depending on your business, a new cloud infrastructure may offer possibilities to develop your services in ways that were not previously available. Cloud servers can offer greater flexibility than many alternatives thanks to the server virtualisation. Deploying new cloud servers is quick and easy, and on UpCloud, the servers can be scaled on-demand with a simple reboot.

Another thing to look for is the server uptime and promised services level agreement. We at UpCloud are so confident in our service to offer 100% SLA. This means that any interruptions longer than 5 minutes are compensated x50 on the cost of the unavailable resources. And in the interest of transparency, we maintain an active status page to report any issues as well as keep a public record of past incidents.

One aspect that often gets overlooked when evaluating a new service is quality customer support. While the need to contact support often means something else has not lived up to your expectations. Having that lifeline should you need it can be the difference between a short interruption and a major service outage. At UpCloud, we pride ourselves on providing one of the best user support services in the cloud industry. With 24/7 availability, there’s never a worry about what-if’s outside office hours.

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, the right choice in migrating is likely to afford cost savings. Some of the price differences might be obvious, especially if moving from a particularly expensive solution. However, even otherwise similarly priced clouds might show cost savings when more capable cloud servers require less over-provisioning to handle the same workload.

Then, with the benefits fresh in mind, the final task is to estimate the costs of migration.

The costs of migration

As with most things in business, the biggest piece in the puzzle comes down to time and money. If the costs of the move would outweigh any benefits gained by a better solution, there’s little reason to go ahead with the migration. This is part of the reason why many businesses end up provider or platform locked without a cost-effective way to change things.

Therefore, it’s important to be able to estimate the costs of migration. Although few projects ever go exactly as planned. Knowing what causes the costs to accrue during migration enables reasonable estimation of the total price of the move.

Some of the aspects of the migration that may create costs include at least the following:

  • Evaluating the new cloud provider
  • Developing and validating the new solution
  • Migrating data safely and securely
  • Potential missed development time on current products or services
  • Hosting costs from operating at double the usual capacity

The overall costs will naturally depend on the size and complexity of your infrastructure. However, a simplified estimation of the total costs could start from 2x of your current hosting spend per month times the number of months it takes to perform the migration. As such, the hosting costs will likely be the largest spend during migration.

While the hosting costs can quickly build up as you begin deploying services onto the new cloud at the same time as having to maintain the old solution, it doesn’t need to stop you. This is where we can help!

We are offering a free migration period during which we’ll cover all of your new cloud infrastructure costs while migrating to UpCloud!

Get in touch with Sales

Get started with UpCloud!

Congratulations for making it this far! We hope you’ve found this post informative. If you are now interested in migrating to UpCloud, firstly, thank you for your choice! Secondly, get in contact to see if your business qualifies for 2-month of free hosting to cover the costs of moving to your new cloud provider.

We’ll make the migration worth the effort!

Migrate to cloud now!

Janne Ruostemaa

Editor-in-Chief

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