Migrations in the Multi-Cloud Era: Why You Need a Proven, Repeatable Approach

Applications and virtual machine workloads are on the move: it’s like back to school for college students.

As summer turns towards fall, back-to-school specials are starting to appear online and in stores and newspapers. When our children were younger, this meant checking the teachers’ supply lists with a quick trip to a local big-box store to pick up several bags of binders, paper and pens.

Nowadays at our house, with college-aged children, this has become a multi-day, multi-campus migration exercise for the whole family as we try to figure out schedules, furniture, winter clothes, computer gear, not to mention the bins and bins required to move the mountains of gear required by the modern college student. If we don’t plan this out and package all this stuff carefully, it becomes a nightmare of unmarked garbage bags that takes hours to haul into their rooms (hint: clear storage bins and a furniture dolly are great tools). And of course, will it all fit in the minivan? And where are we going to stay on the way?

With the rise of multi-cloud IT strategies, many IT organizations are taking a fresh look at their application portfolios and shifting applications from traditional dedicated infrastructure silos to service-oriented private clouds and public clouds. IT application and infrastructure owners are facing a similar set of issues when they go to migrate their applications to new cloud environments. How do we package this stuff up? How are we going to schedule this?  What tools do we need to do this quickly while minimizing risk? And how do our teams find time to make all of this happen?

Simplify Your Migration with Packaged Services Aligned to Your Needs

At Dell Technologies Consulting, we’ve been migrating data centers, applications, databases and virtual machine infrastructure for many years, and we’ve learned quite a bit about how to migrate applications and infrastructure. We’ve even developed purpose-built tools to make it easier for our delivery teams to plan, organize, schedule and manage these migrations.

Multi-cloud is the new norm, with some applications moving to private cloud and others moving to the public cloud and while applications are repatriating back to private cloud. If your organization is planning a migration, you may find one of our pre-packaged ProConsult Migration services are just what you need. And, we can always provide a customized service for complex environments.

Figure 1: ProConsult Migration Services Available in Base, Core, Plus and Custom Packages.

Migrate a Broad Range of Virtual Machines, Application Content and Databases

We’ve made it easy with available services for a number of options – each with a Base, Core, Plus and Custom service configurations.

  • VMware Cloud/Data Center is for migrating VM workloads into VMware-based cloud platforms on-premises or colocation dedicated hardware.
  • Public Cloud is for migrating VM workloads to or from a VMware private cloud and a single public cloud instance.
  • SQL Server is for migrating SQL Server instances, databases and associated applications.
  • VDI is for migrating user workspaces to Horizon View, Horizon Cloud or Workspace One.
  • Office 365 Communication is for migrating on-premises Exchange mailboxes to Exchange Online.
  • Office 365 Communications is for migrating either SharePoint sites to SharePoint Online or user file shares to OneDrive for Business.

Our Proven Migration Methodology

We’ve discovered, based on years of performing migrations of all sizes and types, that a repeatable approach is essential to success. We’ve embodied that approach in a simple but robust methodology visually represented here.

Figure 2: ProConsult Migration Framework.

You’ll notice several things about this methodology. First, we use the same approach, regardless of what type of content we’re migrating, whether it’s virtual machines, application content or databases.  Second, we use the same approach regardless of how intensive a migration program that’s underway.

Partner with Experts Who Do It Every Day

You probably have lots of application & IT experts in your organization, but they likely don’t perform migrations on a regular basis, preferring to focus on strategic initiatives. No worries, Dell Technologies Consulting Service does. Migrations are what we do – all the time – for customers of every size and vertical. Our pre-packaged ProConsult Migration services are designed to allow you to choose the service that aligns with how much or how little help you need. Want more information? Contact your Dell Technologies representative to learn how we can help with your migration initiatives or read our ProConsult Migration Service Overview to learn more.

About the Author: David Buffo

David is a Consulting Marketing Manager for Dell Technologies Services, based in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. He has 25 years’ experience in the IT industry, including 15 years in solutions and services. David’s focus is IT infrastructure, but his work with clients is concerned with accelerating transformation of IT from a technology supplier into a provider of services to the business. He started with EMC (now Dell Technologies) in 2004 and meets regularly with clients at Dell Technologies' executive briefing center and at industry conferences.