Realizing the Cloud’s Full Potential – From NetApp to Cloud

Last Updated on March 6, 2022 by rabiamuzaffar

With NetApp to Cloud, you can uncover the cloud’s full potential. It will help you accelerate performance, protection and deliver unparalleled control for applications and data workload in the cloud. Through NetApp, you can rest assured that your data is secure with the cloud, all while maintaining good application performance. NetApp offers your business well-managed storage solutions that will improve your business and improve your overall efficiency and security. To illustrate this better, we have compiled in this article some reasons which will demonstrate why this process works. We hope you find it helpful!

What Is Cloud migration?

A company or business may decide to transfer its data center capabilities to cloud-based Infrastructure. A cloud service provider facilitates this process. Migrations tend to occur within the cloud and between different cloud service providers. The latter is known as cloud service migration. This transition has become increasingly common in recent years as various businesses have undertaken this process. 

Why consider NetApp to Cloud? 

There is a massive amount of data that is generated every day. It is hypothesized that in the next half a decade will see approximately 176 zettabytes of data produced. The majority of this data is generated by businesses, half of which is stored in the public cloud. The word is quickly becoming more contemporary, and with that, we see changes in our relationship to technology. One implication of this evolution is the greater dependency that people and industries will have on cloud-based applications, services, and systems. With NetApp’s fantastic and extended storage facilities, you can store, use and protect your data for almost thirty years! Various services providers and giant companies use NetApp as a fundamental component of their storage. Ultimately, data will be one of your most valuable assets, so you want to ensure that it’s stored securely and managed perfectly through the length of its lifecycle. NetApp solutions aim to make the migration process a lot simpler. Its goal remains to move and maintain synchronicity between larger amounts of data. The tools it employs primarily serve this purpose and sync data quickly and safely.

The service volumes that NetApp offers include

• Fully managed cloud volume services – You can conduct migration between various kinds of object-based storage repositories. 
• Cloud volumes ONTAP – These work to reduce the cost of network bandwidths during migration processes and speed up data transfer. 

What Can You Expect to See? 

• Reduce data footprint by almost 99%
• Run workload faster and effectively
• Create 100 TB Volume
• Stay ahead of any threats 
• Easy backup and recovery
• Data replication technologies 

How Can You Migrate to Cloud? 

1. Begin by drafting your migration goals. The more extensive your understanding of applications used by your business, the better your migration process will be. You can create a tentative outline by considering factors such as the software being used, the apps that no longer serve as well as the original did, and those that are still functioning well and can bring value to the cloud. Further, specific applications operate on separate servers and use different networking infrastructures. Movement and migration f a single app can affect other apps. So remember to hold space for application dependencies as well.
2. Determine your goals by establishing the basic threshold for success. Most companies have performance indicators that can be employed to measure growth and learn from shortcomings to avoid potential setbacks. The same principles apply to Cloud migration. In addition, you can keep in mind specific considerations such as availability, maintenance, scalability, operational load, and access speed. 
3. Narrow down on automation tools. These are tools designed for the specific purpose of making your migration easier and hassle-free. They do the heavy lifting primarily so that you can relax on that score. These tools help your process because now you no longer need to re-write apps. Various third-party vendors have tools designed that you can employ. Further, several aspects need to be migrated. 
4. Free Vs. Paid tools: Public providers give you access to free and mature tools that can assist with the automation of your cloud migration process. However, do keep in mind that not all of them support a multi-cloud strategy. For that, you may want to consider migrating your applications between multiple cloud providers. If you are looking for a multi-cloud architecture, we would recommend going for full-featured paid tools. Some examples include Densify and Turbonomics. As a result, you can migrate to public and private clouds as these tools tend to be vendor-agnostic, unlike free ones, which tend to be proprietary to individual cloud vendors. Ultimately, as you select the device that best suits your needs, remember to consider factors such as functionality and compatibility and keep in mind your budget.
5. You may also be required to conduct tests that can measure performance to ensure the seamless functioning of all applications. Also, infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tools can help you IT specialists with deployments and work in various environments. You may want to automate your backups too. 

Migration Strategy

Next, decide upon a migration strategy. The most common strategy is to follow the steps here:

1. Re-platform: With this, you modernize certain aspects of your applications as you transfer them to the cloud. 
2. Re-factor: This strategy involves optimizing cloud capabilities by making changes to the application code.
3. Retain: This refers to applications that do not lend themselves to the migration process for one reason or another. Retire: Eliminating or switching off applications that are no longer needed. 
4. Re-host: this is the proves of shutting down servers and making a shift to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) of the cloud provider to end up selecting 

Ensuring Backup Efficiently

You must also ensure that you have a sturdy backup system in place. In other words, when data is stored on-premise, there can be some challenges. Meeting them usually requires that your IT team reload applications with data from backup drives. Unfortunately, the cloud does not open these options to you; therefore, you need to take some steps to ensure backup: 

You can consider segmenting your team into levels. This way, specific files are operated by people who are proficient in handling them.

Train your staff to handle cloud-based applications to prevent accidental data loss by significantly reducing the possibility of human error. 

You may also want to give a thought to adopting backup tools that are native to the cloud. These are usually reliable backup solutions that are accounted for reliably, assisting you with safe and easy backup. Running an anti-deletion campaign will be great for crucial data (even with automated data backup). 

Finally, set up a test that will help you gauge the environment and understanding your strategy. Employ migration tools after data backups are in place, secure, and running. 

Migration will be the last step in your process, as you ensure that the procedures mentioned above are in place at the technical level. This strategy will help you transport your data and applications to the cloud infrastructure. It will be to your advantage and support the smooth transition if you have kept in mind the necessary precautions and enlist assistance from trained professionals. 

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