Do you have what it takes to go big in the cloud?
Doug Jones
Moving data to the cloud is a strategic business decision; but how you choose to get there can impact on your business success once you arrive. Many cloud technology vendors promise that migrating to the cloud is easy – it’s true that if you are moving small data sets or workloads to a public cloud platform, ‘over wire’ migrations typically require minimal planning and are quick and cost effective. But what if you want to move large amounts of data at one time? As a rapidly growing remote workforce continues to drive ‘anywhere operations’ as the new normal, many enterprises are pushing to migrate hundreds of terabytes of data to the cloud in a short amount of time. Try to move this quantity of data over wire would take months. A successful large-scale cloud migration from a legacy environment requires planning and a significant amount of preparation, knowledge of public cloud services and infrastructures, and, of course, the right automated management and migration tools to get you there smoothly and securely.
Go big, go bulk
‘Bulk’ data migration offers a good solution. A bulk migration uses host-based replication to mirror the on-premises data and workloads being migrated to enable them to remain online. With the right migration tools and expertise, a bulk migration provides uninterrupted user access during the migration so that you can maintain business as usual. But like any big move, a bulk data migration carries a lot of risks. Keeping track of multiple operating systems is a tough ask – data can get lost in the migration process, and you may not realize it until it’s too late. To handle the heavy lifting of a large-scale data migration, you want to have the right expertise on hand to plan and execute the move with the best tools for the job. But all too often limited internal expertise and/or resources for planning and managing a large-scale migration result in delays, unexpected cost overruns, and slow cloud adoption due to improper sequencing or tool selection.Let an expert give you a hand
Unlike other cloud vendors, NetApp’s Professional Services teams have been leading large-scale data migrations, on premises and to the cloud, for more than two decades. Leveraging our well-established partnerships with the major public cloud providers – AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud – our cloud migration specialist can get you the biggest bang from your cloud buck. By determining a successful migration strategy and simplifying the management of bulk data migrations from on premises to a NetApp Cloud Volume platform in any major public cloud environment, our seasoned experts help you establish a quick and efficient path to your desired end-state. Using the right sequencing and migration tools, we mitigate business disruptions from outages and long cutovers during and following a migration and run parallel environments throughout the migration to facilitate a quick, complete, secure, and successful move to the cloud.For more information on how NetApp Professional Services can help you with large-scale cloud data migrations, visit Think twice, migrate once.
Doug Jones
Doug Jones is a senior product services manager with NetApp and leads portfolio strategy for Migration Services. He holds an MBA from Duke Fuqua School Business in General Management and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Florida Atlantic University. He lives in the greater Asheville, NC area.
