{"id":109551,"date":"2026-05-11T13:03:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T13:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/?p=109551"},"modified":"2026-04-14T09:34:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T09:34:47","slug":"how-to-ensure-success-following-a-cloud-migration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/cloud\/how-to-ensure-success-following-a-cloud-migration\/","title":{"rendered":"How to ensure success following a cloud migration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Making sure everything is running smoothly after a <\/strong>cloud migration<\/strong><\/a> is critically important, even after a lot of time has passed. It’s also important to continue the optimization journey post-migration. Pat Wright explains why in this article, part of his <\/strong>‘How to migrate from on-prem to the cloud<\/strong>‘<\/a> series.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You’ll likely have one or two processes that didn\u2019t properly migrate and now don\u2019t work – you’ll want to find these before they impact your customers. You’ll also want to optimize your resources now that you’re in this shiny new cloud, after all those hours of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s also important to understand that migrations like to scale everything up and use more resources to deal with the complexity of the migration. You may have started this process to save costs in the future – so now you need to focus on how your system is actually running, and optimize for it. But how’s best to do so? Here’s my advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ensure the key baselines are on the system<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Knowing what resources (cpu, mem, disk) the system has been using will give you an idea of what you should expect from you new cloud servers. You can use these baselines to compare what the cloud is doing to make adjustments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minimize, minimize, minimize…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now that you’re in the cloud, it’s crucial to understand that everything has a cost<\/a>. The more you can review what is actually needed (or not), the more you can trim down and cut <\/em>those costs. So, focus on what you can now shrink, even if this just asks of each cluster, \u201cdo we need these resources?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and set up automation to help do so<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

On a similar note, it’s good practice to set up an automation<\/a> to focus on removing servers\/resources you no longer need. It\u2019s now VERY easy to create a server and test things. It\u2019s also very easy to forget you have the server and not shut it down! Automation can greatly help with this, so you should put something in place sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learn what metrics you now need to track\u00a0<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Cloud servers have some metrics that don’t act the same as on-premises servers, so it’s important you understand these. Working directly with your cloud provider should help here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check your permissions, security, and roles<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Security<\/a> may have taken a back seat during the migration phase, so it’s imperative to now review that and get everything in order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A cloud migration is never just ‘done’<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Even after completing all the steps above, you’re never truly ‘finished’ with a cloud migration. At least, I’ve never seen this myself. Typically, you get over a few big components\/applications and then spend even more time optimizing and improving. I do see that migrations change everything about a company and how it works. It does make things better in the end. Of course, you want to now take advantage of that, and focus on what you can do to continue to optimize for the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But first – celebrate!<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s important to let people know all the good work they’ve put into the project. Cloud migrations can take a long time, so I suggest setting milestones along the way to ‘celebrate’ when you hit them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The importance of knowledge sharing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The cloud migration may not be over because, as mentioned, it rarely ever is. However, the team that executed the migration may now have other projects to work on, so others need to be trained up. Just like I’m sharing knowledge in these articles, it\u2019s important to do the same with your colleagues. To make things easier, you’ll ideally have documented everything during the migration, as noted in a previous article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Focus on automation to ensure future migration success<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This is loosely connected to what I mentioned earlier, but this time I’m more referring to automation that can help with future cloud migrations. You may have written some good scripts during the migration, and made some useful tools, so now’s a great time to harden them and adapt them for a variety of situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check any fixes you may have made during the cloud migration<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps, during the cloud migration, you needed to put in place some temporary fixes to the application. Well, don’t lose those changes! Make sure to go back and address them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In summary: the migration is never fully ‘over’<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This most likely won\u2019t be the end of the project. For example, you may have other applications that you weren’t able to move alongside everything else, so now need to be taken care of. In a large organization, a cloud migration can sometimes even take several years! For now, though, make sure to celebrate – migrations are one of the largest projects you can take on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cloud adoption is accelerating, but database migrations aren\u2019t keeping pace. Find out why.<\/h3>\n
\n The Cloud Migration Divide explores why complex, business-critical databases remain on-premises \u2013 and what\u2019s holding organizations back as confidence fails to scale with complexity. <\/div>\n <\/div>\n Download the free report<\/a>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n
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FAQs: How to ensure success following a cloud migration<\/h2>\n\n

1. What should you do after a cloud migration?<\/h3>\n
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After a cloud migration, you should monitor system performance, identify broken processes, optimize resource usage, improve security, and implement automation to reduce costs and improve efficiency.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n

2. Why is optimization important after moving to the cloud?<\/h3>\n
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Cloud environments often scale resources up during migration. Optimization helps reduce unnecessary costs, improve performance, and ensure your infrastructure matches real usage needs.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n

3. How can you reduce cloud costs post-migration?<\/h3>\n
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You can reduce costs by minimizing unused resources, rightsizing servers, removing unnecessary workloads, and using automation to shut down idle systems.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n

4. What metrics should you track in the cloud?<\/h3>\n
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Key metrics include CPU usage, memory, disk performance, and cloud-specific metrics like scaling behavior and service utilization, which may differ from on-prem systems.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n

5. How does automation help after cloud migration?<\/h3>\n
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Automation helps manage resources efficiently, remove unused infrastructure, enforce policies, and prevent unnecessary spending from forgotten services.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n

6. Why is security review important after migration?<\/h3>\n
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Security may be overlooked during migration, so reviewing permissions, roles, and access controls ensures your cloud environment is protected against vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n

7. Is a cloud migration ever truly finished?<\/h3>\n
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No, cloud migration is an ongoing process. Continuous optimization, updates, and improvements are required to maintain performance and cost efficiency.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n

8. What role does knowledge sharing play after migration?<\/h3>\n
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Knowledge sharing ensures teams understand the new cloud environment, reduces reliance on migration teams, and supports future improvements and scalability.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learn how to optimize performance, reduce costs, improve security, and ensure long-term success after moving from on-prem to the cloud.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":346611,"featured_media":103110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,143523,53],"tags":[5336,4168,159381],"coauthors":[159379],"class_list":["post-109551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud","category-databases","category-featured","tag-cloud","tag-database","tag-how-to-migrate-from-on-prem-to-the-cloud-a-dba-stories-series"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/346611"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109551"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109557,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109551\/revisions\/109557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109551"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=109551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}