Considering cloud migration services can feel a bit like standing on train tracks in a tunnel: Is the light in the distance the sun, or an oncoming train? You need to protect previous investments in on-premise servers and infrastructure while improving operations, expanding growth potential, and reducing costs. It can seem incredibly complex to find a path through. Compute engine in the Google Cloud Platform can get you through the decision tunnel and out into daylight.
On-Prem Servers vs. Cloud Migration Services
On-prem servers are costly and limited—facts amplified during the first weeks of the COVID-19 shutdown when physical access to server rooms was a true challenge. Care and feeding of on-prem servers includes housing, cooling, administration, maintenance, backups, and operations. Cloud migration services have big benefits worth considering, and raise concerns like security, control, downtime, and wondering what you don’t even know to ask.
Starting on a known platform gives you a familiar foundation, which can be a real comfort to an organization moving into new territory.
Compute Engine in the Google Cloud Platform lets you upload or create virtual Linux or Windows machines, moving servers to the cloud and using virtual machines as if they’re real. Simplified deployment and live migration mean your apps can keep running while in maintenance mode without interruption. Because your VMs live on Google’s infrastructure, backups are automatic, administration is minimal, and they’re entirely scalable based on need. If you need 1,000 machines today and five tomorrow, that’s totally okay.
Compute Engine: You Do You
One way to approach making the move to cloud migration services is lift and shift—moving your app to a cloud-based infrastructure without having to completely redesign it. Compute Engine works with hybrid on-prem/cloud migrations and app migration from other cloud locations is seamless, too. If you’ve already invested in licenses, bring them along! Or you can use internal licensing.
Predefined machines with ready-to-go configurations get you up and running in a matter of minutes, or you can build custom machines optimized for your specific computing needs. Preemptible machines can further reduce computing costs with short-term (as in 24 hours) occurrences—great for batch jobs and fault-tolerance workloads. Made-to-order, scalable frameworks mean as your requirements change, so can your infrastructure. With sizing recommendations, you won’t spend more than you need to.
Machine Type Considerations
Pick the type of machine and the geographical location that will best meet your needs.
- General Purpose: Best for web servers and databases
- Compute Optimized: High-performance computing power, appropriate for gaming, electronic design automation, and single-threaded apps
- Memory Optimized: Meets large memory needs like big in-memory databases (SAP HANA) and in-memory analytics for medical analysis and machine learning.
- Accelerator Optimized: Modeled after the NVIDIA Ampere A100 Tensor Core GPU, these have about 20x the power than before. For high-demand workloads.
High Availability (HA)
Compute Engine has automatic failover to other zones or regions via Managed Instance Groups (MIG) and application-based auto-healing health checks—critical for HA instances. If an app is unresponsive on a VM, the auto healer recreates it. Utilizing regional MIGs allows you to disperse workloads across zones to protect against zonal failure. MIGs also use load balancing to more equally distribute traffic. All this combines for stable, built-in solutions for whatever may arise—without compromising your performance.
Autoscaling
You define autoscaling parameters important to your use cases: CPU demand, request frequency, workload, and other indicators. As needs increase, your computing power rises to accommodate it; when traffic falls off, you’re not left stuck paying for resources you won’t use. Predictive autoscaling uses MIG history to pre-scale in advance of a predicted load, so servers are ready when it comes, with no lag. It continues to use real-time data to adjust as needed. Predictive autoscaling is great for apps with long initialization time and predictable cycles.
Autoscaling without the predictive element is appropriate for other use cases. In these instances, it scales based on real-time changes in demand.
Security: Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Compute Engine’s deep security includes breakthrough technology that encrypts data while it’s processing, and your team’s administrators keep the final say for authorizations.
Administrators authorize specific team members to take specific action ranges on specific resources; you maintain full central operational visibility and governance. This centralized location for security and protocols is an exceptional benefit to large, complex organizations. Plus, there’s built-in auditing for all processes and operations.
It’s beyond compliance; it’s peace of mind.
Talk to Your Team, Then Talk to an Expert
A holistic organizational approach to something as significant as a cloud migration is essential to ensure its success. Your team is very adapted to using and working around the less-than-optimal aspects of your current system. Dig in to their methods and concerns, and then talk to an expert. Compute Engine in the intuitive Google Cloud Platform has the potential to smooth any migration.
