Migration Lift & Shift
There are different types of cloud migrations an enterprise can perform. One common model is “Lift and Shift”.
Lift and Shift is a strategy for moving an application or operation from one environment to another – without redesigning the architecture. In the lift-and-shift migration, certain environments can be moved from on-premises to the cloud, as is. This approach is a common option for replicating on-premises servers in the cloud while avoiding costly, time consuming redesign.
The complexity of an environment is a key factor in the decision whether it should be lifted and shifted or re-architected. Usually, traditional environments such as (Server / Client) or (Database, Applications and WEB layers) are often good candidates for lifting and shifting.
Some companies might lift and shift an application to reduce on-premises infrastructure costs in the short term but then re-architect the app once it’s in the cloud. In disaster recovery, rapidly moving an on-premise legacy app to the cloud to keep it going but then re-architecting it later might be a good option.
Lifting and Shifting isn’t just cutting and pasting. A lift-and-shift project needs to be lead carefully by creating the proper documentation of requirements or operational design.