7 steps for a zero-downtime migration to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Migrating to the cloud is a pivotal step if you are modernizing your IT infrastructure. However, it also increases the risk of downtime, which can lead to business disruptions, lost revenue and customer dissatisfaction. A zero-downtime migration is therefore ideal.

Let’s explore strategies and best practices for effortless cloud migration with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).  

Working with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

First, why should your organization choose OCI as your preferred cloud platform?

For one, its powerful computing capabilities and high-performance networking keep your applications running efficiently – and scaling is not a problem, as the infrastructure handles dynamic workloads with ease.

All of this comes with comprehensive security, including identity management, data encryption and network isolation, and compliance with industry regulations.

And, when you look at the bottom line, Oracle’s flexible pricing model means you pay only for the resources you use, making it a cost-effective solution compared with traditional on-premises infrastructure.

OCI also integrates seamlessly with other Oracle products, such as databases and enterprise resource planning tools. This integration means you can streamline your IT environment by reducing multivendor complexity.

Cloud migration with OCI: step by step

While the benefits of choosing OCI are clear, the migration itself can be complex. The potential for downtime is a big concern, and you want to transfer your data accurately and securely.

Your organization may also still have legacy systems that are incompatible with modern cloud environments. Migrating these systems will require careful planning and reengineering.

Then, after the migration, you’ll have to optimize your applications and services to take full advantage of OCI’s capabilities.

So, how do you address these issues to achieve a zero-downtime migration?

1. Plan ahead

Thorough planning is the cornerstone of a successful migration. Define your migration goals, assess your current infrastructure and identify potential risks – including systems and applications that may not function correctly in OCI.

Data integrity is also crucial. Part of your planning should include encryption and verification tools that you can use to transfer your data securely and without corruption. You’ll also have to run validation tests to confirm that the transferred data in OCI matches your on-premises data.

Along the way, you can use OCI’s monitoring tools to track the performance of your applications and infrastructure. In this way, you can address performance issues early on.

Keep all stakeholders – including your IT team, business leaders and users – informed throughout the process to manage their expectations and prepare them for any challenges.

2. Consider a phased strategy

Rather than trying to migrate all your systems at once, consider a phased strategy. Moving individual applications, workloads or components in stages allows you to test each phase in OCI with less risk because you can identify and address potential issues early on.

A gradual shift to cloud also allows you to maintain business continuity. You’ll have more time to scale your new cloud environment up or down, gradually, based on your resource needs.

OCI also supports blue–green deployment, which involves running two identical production environments, called “blue” and “green”. At any given time, only one of these environments is live and handling user traffic, while the other is idle. This means you can update or migrate applications without affecting your live environment.

3. Use data replication and syncing tools

These tools copy your data and applications from your on-premises production environment to OCI in real time while keeping both environments in sync.

Popular replication tools in the OCI stable include:

• Oracle Data Guard: This powerful tool for disaster recovery and data replication helps you to replicate databases between your existing infrastructure and OCI.
• Oracle GoldenGate: This software enables real-time data integration and replication across heterogeneous environments to keep your data updated during the process.

4. Lift and shift with minimal downtime

A lift-and-shift strategy involves migrating your applications to the cloud without making major changes to their architecture. It’s a straightforward approach, but it’s still best to avoid disruption by scheduling the migration during off-peak hours and using OCI’s high-availability features – including fault-tolerant regions and availability domains – to maintain continuity.

Do comprehensive premigration testing in a staging environment to check that your applications will function as expected in OCI, and have a disaster-recovery plan in place in case of unexpected issues. OCI’s built-in disaster-recovery solutions allow automatic failover to backup systems.

Once you’re in the cloud, you can also use OCI’s load-balancing services to distribute traffic across multiple instances so that no single point of failure will disrupt your services. The capabilities of Oracle Autonomous Database, including self-patching and self-healing, will eliminate downtime during maintenance or upgrades.

5. Consider containerization and microservices for application modernization

If you want to modernize your applications as part of your cloud migration, containerization and microservices architectures will reduce the risk of downtime.

Containers let you break down monolithic applications into smaller, independent services that can be deployed and updated independently. This means you can move individual components of an application to OCI without affecting the entire system,

Then, by deploying microservices, your application will remain functional even if one service experiences an issue during migration.

6. Use cloud-native development tools

Build new applications or services directly in OCI using cloud-native development tools. Oracle provides a range of tools, such as Kubernetes, Oracle Functions and Oracle API Gateway, to help you design scalable and resilient applications in the cloud.

• ALSO READ → Make the shift: why cloud-native modernization matters

7. Don’t do it alone

Having an expert partner by your side makes it far easier to transition to OCI without any hassles or unforeseen complications.

NTT DATA’s migration products and services include automated tools for migrating virtual machines, databases and applications to OCI with minimal disruption. We also provide expert support and resources to speed up your migration and achieve a smooth transition.

And, if your organization is using VMware, we help you use Oracle Cloud VMware Solution to migrate your workloads to OCI while maintaining compatibility with your existing infrastructure.

Our monitoring tools provide real-time insights throughout your migration, so we can work proactively to avert any potential disasters.

• ALSO READ → Don’t wait for a crisis: why regular disaster-recovery drills matter

Make the switch to cloud success

Choosing OCI as your cloud platform and NTT DATA as your migration partner simplifies migrating your data and applications to the cloud and guarantees great performance and ROI once you’re up and running.