Best 4 Ideas to A Successful Google Cloud Migration

Google cloud migration offers several lucrative services that will increase operational efficiency in businesses

Google Cloud is gradually becoming a market leader in cloud services and closely follows Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Amazon Web Services.

You’ve reached the right place if you are thinking of migrating to Google Cloud but don’t know how to begin.

This guide will show you how to migrate your workloads from the Microsoft Azure platform to Google Cloud in four easy steps.

Step1: Assessing Your Current Environment, and The Workload that will be Migrated

Three types of environments can be considered.

1. On-premise: Your current environment’s hardware and software elements are hosted on-premise and managed by staff. This gives you full control over the environment but also allows you to take full responsibility for it.
2. Private Hosting: This is where the infrastructure is outsourced to another party. You don’t need to maintain the security of the infrastructure. You still have control over the software aspects of your environment, including hypervisors and virtual machines.
3. Public cloud environment: Your environment can be hosted on other cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The cloud vendor handles everything, so all you need to do is manage your workloads.

There are two types of workloads, depending on whether they’re cloud-native.

1. Legacy: These non-cloud-native workloads were not designed with cloud functionality in mind. They are therefore more difficult to move and run on the Cloud.
2. Cloud-native: This type is compatible with cloud environments such as Google Cloud. It makes it easier to migrate to the cloud while keeping your data more secure.

Next, take inventory of all the workloads you intend to migrate to the Cloud. Also, note their requirements, such as licensing, hardware, and dependencies. The following question should be asked:

• What is the importance of the workload for the business? What speed would you need to move the workload?
• Is it difficult to transfer the workload based on the previous assessments?
• Are other workloads dependent on the workload? (Or vice versa if it’s dependent on other workloads).

To better understand the cost of Google Cloud deployment (including maintenance), you should also do a total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) calculation. This is particularly important for migrating from an existing environment to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or other cloud environments. Hidden costs are often overlooked when calculating costs in an old environment.

These assessments will help you decide which workloads to migrate and which ones to prioritize.

Step 2 – Planning The Steps of Migration

This phase focuses on identifying the resources required to achieve the goal of the Google Cloud migration. Prioritizing the steps is important.

It is usually better to start with the easiest aspects of the migration. This will allow you to get familiar with the Google Cloud Platform and give you the opportunity to test different aspects of the migration.

Google Cloud is a special case, so you will need to take into account the following aspects when planning.

1. User and service identities: Google has a guide for user and service identities on how to set up IAM (Identity and Access Management).
2. Resource allocation planning hierarchy: Google Cloud’s resource organization hierarchies can be arranged via projects, folders, organization nodes, and folders.
3. Defining roles, groups, and roles: Define roles and groups to allocate resources. This is where the emphasis lies on ensuring that users only have access to information and resources necessary to complete their tasks. This will ensure data security and efficiency.
4. How to design a network topology: Google has a guide that will help you to create your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), which will ensure a reliable, secure, and fast network topology.

Step 3 – Deployment

As the name implies, this phase is about preparing for the migration process by provisioning workloads.

You may or not want to use the exact same deployment method for all workloads depending on how many you have to migrate. However, a consistent approach will make it easier to manage and allow you to assess and improve the process.

However, it is important to validate and test all configurations and resources before migrating. After all, configurations have been tested and verified that they work as intended, you can only move assets.

There are two options when it comes to deploying your workloads:

• Manual deployment: You have greater control over the process and can adjust the configurations to your needs. It’s however more complicated and prone to errors. Also, keeping an audit trail of the deployment process can prove difficult.
• Automated deployments: You can use tools such as Google Deployment manager to automate deployments of workloads. This method will give you more traceability and be more reliable in most cases.

Step 4: Optimizing Google Cloud Environment

If you’re migrating in stages, you can optimize your Google Cloud environment during migration (i.e. after a basic deployment of priority workloads is completed and tested on Google Cloud), or after you have finished migrating.

Optimizing is a phase that ensures you get the best performance possible according to your business goals while using fewer resources.

This should include training your employees to maximize the adoption of Google Cloud.

To optimize your migration process, you can use multiple tools and solutions. This includes Google’s Cloud Monitoring Tool. You should also consider optimizing your cost with autoscaling.

Google Cloud Migration using Pythian

Pythian’s Google Cloud Migration Services might be of interest to you if you need more assistance. These services will ensure that you have a smooth and secure migration to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This will allow you to enjoy Google Cloud’s benefits faster and also give Pythian access to in-depth data expertise as well as customizable security solutions.

A smooth transition to Google Cloud will allow your company to maximize the ROI of cloud migration so that you get the most out of your cloud environment.