What is Lift and Shift Cloud Migration Strategy?
The Lift and Shift Cloud Migration Strategy, also known as the rehosting strategy, is the process of removing your applications from one infrastructure location and redeploying it in the cloud provider’s infrastructure without altering its functionality and interface usability i.e. without modifying the application code or its features.
From a technical standpoint, the lift and shift migration approach is the process of copying the applications in your servers and pasting them as is within the servers of your selected provider. It involves taking a snapshot of the application server VM’s on the source environment including the OS, boot record, converting into a compatible format (depending on provider), importing it on the provider’s infrastructure as a custom Image, and then re-instantiating the image.
Though it is less invasive to the inner workings of your applications, the approach is considered a pathway to application modernization because by improving the underlying infrastructure that powers your applications, you are optimizing their performance and beginning your journey to the Cloud.
Key Takeaways
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Lift and Shift Cloud Migration: Advantages
Preserve the Ecosystem
Through the lift and Shift cloud migration strategy, IT leaders can avoid compromising their applications. The benefits of this are limited alteration to the current IT structure and limited disruption to the business for a consistent end-user experience. Infrastructure offers enablement but through the lift and shift strategy, you can avoid unnecessary transformation that is unwanted within your business. If current applications are not causing inefficient workflows, it isn’t broke, so why fix it?
Reduced Time, Labor, and Cost
Remove a large portion of the work that typically comes with application redevelopment. By removing this workload, you enjoy the time, cost, and labor savings that you wouldn’t otherwise see in other migration strategies that require you to modify code and alter the internal structure of your software.
Quicker Time to Market
If you are considering a migration to Cloud IaaS in order to accommodate sudden or rapid growth, this is an extraordinary benefit of the lift and shift strategy. Under the same logic that you’re receiving added savings by removing application-related work, you’re also accelerating your migration to the cloud so that you can take advantage of its scalability and agility in real-time.
User-Friendly Tools for Added Visibility and Control
The lift and shift is a popular strategy and thus there is a lot of education available to you on topics that may not be readily available for migration strategies that require more cloud-native skill. Additionally, depending on the provider you choose, some providers give their customers very user-friendly tools to assist them in their path to the cloud, giving them complete visibility and control over the process. For example, Oracle offers E-Business Suite customers a tool called EBS Cloud Manager so that they have complete supervision over their migration process. For other migration strategies, this linear monitorization becomes less achievable as more pieces begin to move and you start to interact with MSPs or 3rd parties for support (in many cases this is strongly recommended even for IaaS migrations so that companies can ensure proper road mapping and further reduce the present risk of migrating).
Requires Less Cloud-Native Skill
The advent of the Cloud as a popular solution for business needs is still in its youth. Many experts and professionals cite the lack of cloud-native skill to be one of the primary reasons for sub-optimal cloud migrations (by added time, cost, and effectivity). With this strategy, your lack of cloud-native skill poses less difficulty in the short term. But as we will see for these points generally, there is a downside to this.
Strategic Deployment
Without getting too technical, with proper supervision and planning, you can incorporate the lift and shift strategically within your cloud adoption, lifting and shifting some applications to the cloud now and altering them down the road. This complicates the process, but with a Cloud Managed Service Provider (MSP) by your side, lift and shift can offer a temporary solution and serve as a stepping stone for greater cloud adoption in the future, depending on your unique road map.
Lift and Shift Cloud Migration: Disadvantages
Less Risk (maybe) & Less Reward (probably)
Those who use this strategy don’t receive the full benefits of the cloud because they aren’t implementing cloud-native tools and functionality. Many of you know this. But although it is considered more cost-effective than on-premise in the short term, it can actually be more costly to run applications in the cloud this way than if you were to re-platform or refactor, especially for highly sophisticated legacy apps that require higher resource provisioning to operate.
Customized Apps are Harder to Move Than You Think
Commercial applications may be easy to move using the lift and shift; however, custom applications that are bespoke or written to address a unique need within the company may require a modification that, if not accounted for in the planning process / in collaboration with an MSP, can cause trouble where remediation through additional labor and costs is needed to avoid disruption to the business.
Legacy Applications
Years of ad hoc updates and quick solutions can cause environments to become a developer’s nightmares. In many cases, companies would probably be better served by discarding their existing infrastructure and adopting cloud-based applications. Moving the application to the cloud is a matter of storage but reconfiguring it to make sure that it runs effectively and aligns with cloud-driven datasets will take more work than a lift and shift project. However, if the business needs those Legacy Applications or are unwilling to sacrifice them if the cloud-native skill is lacking, you may need to consult with a 3rd party or MSP who specializes in migrations to your preferred provider. If they demonstrate strong maturity, you can likely retain your apps with little to no changes.
Skips the Essential Cloud Learning Curve
Given the recent introduction of Cloud, many businesses face a risk of skill shortage. How do you develop skills? Time and experience. Though the lift and shift has all these benefits, a clear opportunity cost is that you’re forfeiting a necessary learning curve that will hinder your future cloud adoption and put you behind in the knowledge race. The less you and your personnel know, the more you’re forced to rely on 3rd parties, and without true cloud experience, you will be lacking informed context that will weaken future judgment of cloud within your business. For some, this is one of the primary reasons not to perform lift and shift because they want to be amid the cloud revolution and are embracing the greater transformation within their company.
Examples of Lift and Shift
You create a new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure virtual machine, based on a new version of the Oracle Linux operating system with the latest security updates. You can then redeploy your application on the new virtual machine and the new. For example, consider the task of migrating PeopleSoft using Cloud Manager. This operation reinstalls PeopleSoft on a new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure VM and moves just the configurations and data over the operating system.
Another example of refactoring to use PaaS might be to take an existing Ruby on Rails application and deploy it to Heroku or to take an existing Drupal application and modify it to run on Acquia Cloud or Pantheon. PaaS options will allow you to focus on the application without having to deal with the underlying OS.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Is lift and shift the same as rehosting?
Yes. Lift and shift and rehosting generally refer to the same cloud migration approach: moving an application and its associated data to cloud infrastructure with minimal or no changes to the application’s underlying code.
2. Is lift and shift suitable for every application?
No. It is generally better suited to applications that can operate effectively on cloud infrastructure without significant architectural changes. Highly customized, tightly integrated, outdated, or resource-intensive applications may require remediation, re-platforming, or refactoring.
3. Does lift and shift reduce cloud migration risk?
It can reduce certain migration risks because fewer application changes are introduced during the move. However, it does not eliminate risks related to dependencies, security, networking, licensing, performance, data migration, or cloud configuration.
4. Will a lift-and-shift migration reduce my IT costs?
Not necessarily. Rehosting can reduce the upfront migration cost and effort, but an application that was designed for on-premises infrastructure may not operate cost-efficiently in the cloud. Post-migration rightsizing, storage optimization, workload scheduling, and other FinOps practices may be required to control ongoing costs.
5. Can I modernize an application after using lift and shift?
Yes. In fact, organizations often use rehosting as an initial step before modernization. Once the application is running in the cloud, teams can assess whether it should subsequently be re-platformed, refactored, rearchitected, rebuilt, or replaced.
6. How do I determine whether an application is a good candidate for lift and shift?
Evaluate its business criticality, dependencies, architecture, operating-system compatibility, integrations, performance requirements, licensing, security requirements, resource consumption, and expected cloud costs. Applications with manageable dependencies and minimal modification requirements are generally stronger candidates.
7. What happens if an application cannot be moved without changes?
The organization may need to perform application remediation or select another migration approach. Depending on the application’s requirements, re-platforming or refactoring may provide a better long-term outcome than forcing a lift-and-shift migration.
8. Does lift and shift make an application cloud-native?
No. Rehosting changes where the application runs, but generally does not change how the application is designed. Cloud-native modernization typically involves adopting cloud services, architectures, automation, scalability mechanisms, and other capabilities that are not necessarily part of a lift-and-shift migration.
