One of the most common use cases for cloud infrastructure - and particularly cloud storage - is data backup and recovery. It’s logical, after all: If you have your data and infrastructure in the cloud - or at least backed up to it - the cloud serves as an ideal secondary location, immune to localized disasters or disruptions. In addition, by relying on cloud storage for your secondary location, you can eliminate the costs and maintenance required to keep a physical colocation facility up and running.
But what happens if you want to switch your cloud storage provider?
In the past few months, we’ve worked with a number of customers who had an immediate need to migrate their data from one cloud provider to another. Whatever the reason for the cloud migration, the process can seem daunting.
Based on working with these customers, we have identified five main tactics for seamless cloud migration, and have found that the right solution is based on your environment:
- Direct cloud-to-cloud migration: Some providers have direct, high-speed connections to other providers. For example, Google and TwinStrata have worked together to develop a way to migrate data from one cloud to the next using Google’s own high-speed connections, and without any impact on the customer’s network. Once the data is moved, it’s a fairly simple exercise to maintain access to the data using TwinStrata CloudArray - without having to modify any of your application settings. And in fact, that’s exactly what we did for customers such as IAC in the last few weeks.
- Cloud compute migration: One of the fundamental advantages of using cloud-integrated storage is the ability to spin up the software in the cloud. By spinning up your cloud gateway in a cloud compute environment, you can do the migration from one cloud to the other using without taxing your own network.
- Repoint the cache: For some organizations, an on-premise transfer is unnecessary. Some of our customers (particularly those using cloud for backup or application data) keep a full copy of everything they have in the cloud in their local cache. If you’re accessing the cloud through a cloud gateway, you should be able to just repoint the cache to the new provider, thereby limiting the impact on your network to just outgoing traffic.
- On-premise transfer: If the amount of data you have in the cloud is small, and your corporate network is large, you can bring the data back on premise and then send it to the new cloud of your choice. If you’re using a cloud enabler such as TwinStrata’s cloud-integrated storage software CloudArray, this exercise becomes significantly simpler because you can simply migrate the volume to another provider, but it can take a toll on your network.
- Start fresh: The final option is limited to those customers who use cloud storage to back up their on-premise data. A small number of organizations with which we’ve worked have elected to start fresh with a new cloud provider by copying their on-premise backups to the new cloud, Once it is safely migrated, they can then delete the data from their existing cloud (or in the case of Nirvanix, just throw away the encryption keys so it can’t be accessed). This option is viable only if you’re using the cloud for backups and have enough onsite copies of your backup to meet your retention policy.
There are a lot of folks right now who think the cloud should be approached with caution due to a perceived difficulty in cloud migration. But our experience so far has shown that that “difficulty” is a matter of perception, not reality.
Google Cloud Platform and TwinStrata have simplified the process of getting your data into the cloud - whether it’s from your on-premises storage or from another cloud provider - providing you with flexibility, simplicity and affordability in your storage strategy.
You can learn more about cloud-integrated storage at TwinStrata.com. We offer a free 14-day trial that includes access to unlimited Google Cloud Storage for the duration of the trial.
-Posted by Michael Anthony, Technical Director, TwinStrata
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