Presentation by John Mulhall of Maolte Technical Solutions Limited on Cloud Migrations for presentation to a meetup by Morgan McKinley Recruitment agency in their Dublin 4 offices on the 30th November 2022.

1. CLOUD
MIGRATION
PROJECTS
John Mulhall
Founder | Engineer | Writer
Maolte Technical Solutions Limited

2. AGENDA
• The Cloud Era Arrives – Why use Cloud?
• ​On-Premise Limitations – Why move to the Cloud?
• On-Premise Infrastructure –V- Cloud Infrastructure
• Project Management – Why Approach is Key?
• Know your Infrastructure – Before you do anything else!
• Iterative Cycles – Knowledge drives a successful
migration strategy!
• Hybrid migration strategies – Why data should dictate
strategy!
• Project Cost Tolerances – a stitch in time saves nine!
• Recommendations for your Cloud Migration Project...

3. THE CLOUD ERA
• Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider is credited with the invention of the
Cloud Computing concept in the 1960s devising the 'logical pool'
concept for cloud resources.
• Rapid technological advances in 'Cloud Computing' after Google's
big table innovation saw a rapid succession of innovations around
cloud computing from the Hadoop white paper in 1998 laying the
foundational groundwork for cloud computing as we know it today.
• The last 10 years saw the 'web 2.0' paradigm shift to user
interactivity revolutionize software design, capabilities and the
internet. The era of the Cloud was born.
• Gartner magic quadrant rates AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform
(GCP) and IBM Cloud as the top 4 cloud IaaS cloud providers in
2022 (source).
Cloud Migration Projects 3

4. WHY USE THE CLOUD?
• Availability and Flexibility of Use.
• Architectural redesign opportunities.
• Massive range of cloud native services increasing effectiveness
and digital product quality.
• Scalability of cloud fleet.
• Highly resilient cloud products (e.g. Azure VM, AWS RDS Cluster).
• Fraction of the time to deploy resources.
• Native integration with IaC and DevOps practices (e.g. Azure
DevOps, AWS CodeStar).
• Better cost control and monitoring services integrated with Cloud
Vendor platforms (e.g. Azure Monitor, AWS CloudWatch).
• Lower cost of compliance (AWS Config, Azure Blueprint).
• 'CapEx' V 'OpEx' – Cost & Tax efficiency.
Cloud Migration Projects 4

5. ON-PREMISE
LIMITATIONS
 Technical Debt.
 Security Costs and Maintenance.
 High 'CapEx' costs maintaining data center location
and hardware.
 Misconfiguration harder to detect and at
times overlooked creating security and operational
vulnerabilities.
 Capacity ceiling in throughput.
 Highly available architecture often not implemented.
 Scalability ceiling.
 Harder and more costly to make changes.

6. ON-PREMISE V CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE
Availability
Can be lowly available
with no service level
agreement
Above average
performance to highly
available with service
level agreements
Can be solutioned with
the help of managed
products e.g. AWS
DataSync, Azure
HCI/APC
Resiliency
Enhancement very
expensive for hardware
maintenance and
upgrades
On demand paradigm
has resiliency set into
core products e.g. Azure
VM has rack separation
across 3 standard VM
copies by default
Solutions can be
developed with data
syncing to cloud VPC/V-
Nets extending on
premise resiliency
Scalability
Limitations defined by
data center capacity
limits
Can scale without real
limits with right
architectural design
Solutions can be
developed with cloud
products to scale out
data center capacity into
the cloud
Cloud Migration Projects 6

7. THERE WERE 5 EXABYTES OF
DATA CREATED BETWEEN THE
DAWN OF CIVILIZATION
THROUGH 2003, BUT NOW THAT
MUCH INFORMATION IS CREATED
EVERY TWO DAYS.
“
Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google
”
7

8. PROJECT MANAGEMENT APPROACH
8
POINTERS
• Keep focused on what we already
have and what we need, then want in
the cloud ref MoSCoW method.
• Assume knowledge gaps exist in the
technical team based on a recent
'aCloudGuru' (aka. Pluralsight) survey
where 8% of engineers considered
themselves advanced cloud
practitioners and 75% of technical
managers expected to utilize
advanced cloud features.
• Ensure a data-driven approach to the
cloud migration underwrites the main
project. Segment or iterate your project
management approach to have a
discovery iteration/segment that
initially defines what we have and then
what we need to have to achieve our
STRATEGY
• Map out existing infrastructure
architecture.
• Map out existing data architecture
including, schema, data at rest
loads/locations and data generation
rates per day/week/month.
• Map out existing network infrastructure
in-terms of architecture I/O and
throughput to consider over internet
data transfer options for data in-transit.
• Is what you have secure? If not, what
security objectives should be set.
• Map resource types, configuration and
project objectives to solution the best
fit spread of target cloud resources.
• Devise a migration strategy taking
timeframe, security, cost and
acceptable data loss for the migration

9. KNOW YOUR
INFRASTRUCTURE
 Highly/Lowly Available Architecture
 Network & security configuration
 Defense in depth and compliance controls
 Throughput loading maximums
 I/O loading ceilings with current compute
resources
 Capacity ceilings and extension limitations
 Failover and disaster recovery processes
 Service level commitments
 Incident Management process
 Costs and support processes
 Technical competence and best practice
adherence
 Change management process flexibility

10. ITERATIVE CYCLES
Cloud Migration Projects 10
PLANNING
Plan and detail
short term
objectives for
execution based on
overall project
requirements
DEVELOPMENT
Develop technology
and execute the
steps in the cycle
TEST
Test the outcomes
and against
planning objectives
to assess success
or failure of the
iterative cycle
REVIEW
Review the cycle
results with
management and
enter the next
iterative cycle

11. HYBRID CLOUD STRATEGY
11
DISCOVERY
STAGE
DISCOVERY
STAGE
DISCOVERY
STAGE
DISCOVERY
STAGE
DISCOVERY
STAGE
Very large level of data
at rest and/or
throughput per
hour/day/week e.g.
OLAP
High I/O levels are at
ceiling capacity and
cloud scaling of
compute required to
support on
premise infrastructure
Disaster Recovery
strategy not in place
and one needed but
allows a high RTO
allowed
Speed in migration is
required but the data
center does not have
throughput capacity for
over internet data
transfer speeds
required
Data center's data
payload at rest is huge
but compute resources
are cloud compatible
as is database
schema, and storage
tools. There is a longer
timeline allowed to
complete the migration

12. PROJECT COST TOLERANCES
• Cost your project for success as it will be always be cheaper than failure in a
migration project to the cloud.
• Consider your project goals and associated requirements, are they considered
critical in the company's road map for development? If so, ensure appropriate
technology and associated funding for this fundamental shift in
your company's technological paradigm is in place. This task requires a
funded project step/segment/cycle (aka. requirements analysis).
• Ensure non-functional requirements like training and development road maps
for technical staff are in place for post-project adoption.
• On-premise costs will be radically different so assign a stage/iteration to get a
data driven view of the new cost profile upon completion of the project.
• Ensure project monitoring solutions are part of your project's non-
functional requirements.
• Have an overrun budget (similar to an SRE style error budget) to account for
contingencies in such a complex project. Only large overruns
should invalidate a project's continuance given the increasing cost of rollback
over the project's lifecycle.
Cloud Migration Projects 12

13. RECOMMENDATIONS
Cloud Migration Projects 13
 Fail to plan, plan to fail. Ensure you fund your project fully and sanity
check your project scope, reach and objectives against your functional
and non-functional requirements.
 Know your current infrastructure in detail and where the actual gaps
are.
 Ensure you document what you know into a workflow and
validate/complete it with an initial project cycle/segment around
discovery. Leave assumptions at the door on what you have and what
can get in the cloud.
 Data is king. Make sure your migration strategy is tailored to your actual
data profile at rest and in transit/generation.
 If a hybrid strategy is your only option, it can over time lead to a full
migration to the cloud if you plan with enough foresight and knowledge.
 Cost your project for success, and ensure your project details a data-
based cost profile for your end solution given it will be radically
different to an on-premise cost profile.
 Consider your project objectives in terms of value-creating goals and
efficiency-creating objectives. Sanity-check them to ensure they are
realistic. This should see periodic segments/iterations in your project
that evaluate these criteria for continuing project feasibility
 Embrace cloud-native features as much as possible in your solution as

14. THANK YOU
John Mulhall​
john@maolte.ie
https://maolte.ie