eBook

The NetApp Guide to

Migrating Enterprise
Workloads to the Cloud

Introduction: Migrating Enterprise

Workloads to the Cloud
Your enterprise workloads are the backbone of your cost control, moving to the cloud is not just about
business operations. Whether they are production solving problems, it’s about learning to avoid new
applications, customer-facing or back office systems, ones. To meet these challenges, the option preferred
databases, big data, web applications, file services, or by most companies taking early steps into the cloud
other custom-built applications, all of them must run is to adopt a hybrid cloud architecture for their
uninterruptedly, securely, and efficiently. enterprise workloads.

Enterprise workloads are the way that the world runs,

and the cloud is making enterprise workloads run better,
work harder, and cost less to maintain than ever before. This handbook acts as a guide for every step
As companies around the world pivot to cloud-enabled IT of the enterprise workload migration process
deployments, those that still have enterprise workloads to the public cloud using AWS, Azure, or
running exclusively in on-premises data centers might need Google Cloud, from the initial motivations
more guidance about the way to move forward. For a large behind the move to orchestrating the
enterprise with diverse customer bases and needs, totally migration and making sure of its deployment.
abandoning an existing IT structure might seem too risky, As challenges to moving an enterprise
no matter what kind of advantages the cloud gives the workload present themselves, we look at
company over its competitors. ways to handle these situations, including
NetApp® technologies such as Cloud
Running an enterprise workload in the cloud comes with Volumes ONTAP® that provide solutions to
challenges: from adapting to a cloud architecture and support and simplify the migration process.
new application process management (APM) processes to
renewed focuses on data integrity, business continuity, and

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud

Table of Contents
Why Migrate an Enterprise Workload to the Cloud? 3

Determining Your Workloads’ Migration Requirements 4

The Type of Migration: Choosing a Method 5

Testing the Workload 6

Finding the Right Migration Solutions 7

NetApp Solutions for Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 8

Cloud Volumes ONTAP: Key Features 10

The Final Stage: Keeping Tabs on the Cloud 11

Cloud Migration Case Studies with Cloud Volumes ONTAP 12

The Cordant Group 12

McKesson 13

AdvancedMD 14

Summary 15

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 2

Why Should Enterprise Workloads
Migrate to the Cloud?
The motivating factors behind a cloud migration are unique PayPal is a major online financial institution that billions
to every company, but behind most of them are several of users worldwide rely on for electronic money transfers,
factors. There is the desire to keep pace with the technology banking, and other financial services. After breaking off
that is being adopted by rival businesses, which allows them from eBay, PayPal moved a number of its mission-critical
to scale larger while cutting costs at the same time. There applications that were on-prem to Google Cloud. But the
is also the desire to increase business agility, cut time to approach to the cloud PayPal took was different: to gain
market, and trade CAPEX spending for OPEX, all of which flexibility, their deployment is hybrid as well as multicloud.
the cloud makes possible. This kind of architecture provides agility and expands the
number of resources and services available to the company,
But that goal is at the end of a complex journey. To make but can add specific challenges when it comes to managing
sure that the migration will be a success, a careful planning data across all those silos.
process needs to be in place. Every aspect of the company’s
business needs and existing IT infrastructure has to be What these examples show is that even the biggest
assessed so that the new cloud-based deployment can enterprises with complex customer requirements and
meet all of the enterprise’s business needs and performance needs can make the jump into the cloud—however, the
requirements. Risks have to be realistically considered migration method and business requirements will shape
and addressed. specific challenges they’ll face, both getting to the cloud and
maintaining their applications in it.
Large enterprises might assume that the cloud won’t be
capable of absorbing their workloads, but the case histories
show otherwise. One example of a company that made a
major shift to the AWS cloud was Philips. Known primarily
for its lighting and appliance branches, Philips also does
significant work in the healthcare industry. The switch of Cloud Migration Plan Challenges
Philips to the cloud brought 15 PB of patient data into AWS
and increased the company’s application performance,
scale, and reliability. Due to regulations in place to safeguard
Environment: Deciding which cloud (or
sensitive information—in this case, information such as
clouds) will benefit your company the most
medical records—migrations such as that of Philips can be
particularly challenging.
Complexity: Moving compute, network,
Geico is an example of a major enterprise moving to Azure and storage to a new environment
cloud services. By moving to a DevOps culture and shifting
development to Azure, the insurance giant was able to Validation: Quantifying and testing how
increase its availability, cutting down the release time for systems will perform in the cloud
new features and lowering operational costs throughout its
business. But that success didn’t happen overnight. Geico’s
Heavy lifting: Finding the data sync
initial strategy to move to the cloud was to shift to all-cloud
and replication tools that will carry out
deployment within one year. But after analysis within the
the migration
company, Geico decided to gradually migrate workloads
as part of a hybrid cloud architecture. This allowed them
to validate each component that they moved to the cloud
before attempting to migrate the next workload.

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 3

Determining Your Workloads’
Migration Requirements
Probably the most important factor to determine in this
early stage is how available you need your workloads to
be. Do you require your workloads to be highly available?
Two factors come in when addressing your workloads’
availability: one is your recovery time objective (RTO), and
the other is your recovery point objective (RPO). These
numbers represent the amount of time that it takes your
business to recover from failure with acceptable losses
and the point in time your business can operate without its
data, respectively. For critical enterprise workloads, these
numbers most likely need to approach zero. These numbers
determine the shape that your high-availability, disaster
recovery, and business continuity plans take, which most
likely are also supported by the cloud.

Another important factor is your business protection

requirements. Is protecting your workload data a key
No two companies have the same IT deployments, so no requirement? In disaster recovery (DR), secondary copies of
two companies migrate to the cloud the same way. Though data are crucial to making sure that your workloads can be
every company can find increased scale, added agility, restored in case there is ever a catastrophic event (such as
and reduced costs in the cloud, the parts of their business a natural disaster, ransomware attack, or hardware failure).
that are able to take advantage of those benefits differ. Your workload needs to be able to failover to a secondary
Before any sort of migration takes place, determining your site if and when such events occur and be able to fail back
company’s requirements in the cloud has to take place. when the primary site is up and running again, keeping in
mind all of your stated service-level agreements (SLAs).
What do these requirements look like? The initial planning
stage of a migration has to identify the workloads that it Requirements that the business has in regard to meeting
is feasible to move to the cloud, because it might not be SLAs for users must also be considered here. There might
practical to move everything. The user base and the rate of also be compliance and regulation guidelines that your
usage for each workload that you plan to move need to be business is expected to follow, such as HIPAA in the health
identified. Your customers or users are affected by the move industry and FISMA at the U.S. federal government level.
if you don’t plan to meet their usage needs during the shift,
so you need to make sure the migration affects users as little In addition to the sensitive personal data that can be subject
as possible. to some of the regulations mentioned above, there is also a
chance that there is duplicate, stale, and unnecessary data
This is also the stage to determine network configurations. in your on-prem repositories. Moving all of that data to the
Your network might have interdependencies with the cloud will not only present higher migration costs, but also
workloads you plan to move that might be affected by a bring issues with it that will need to be addressed in the
transition to the cloud. Another major factor is costs. The cloud, complicating your success in the new environment.
three cost components of compute, storage, and networking Your migration planning should include a step for you to
must be calculated. However, because the storage “clean up” your data sets through a systematic review of all
component is the one that grows on a constant basis, the data you’re considering to move to the cloud.
minimizing storage costs should be a key consideration
when planning the move.

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 4

 Key steps for determining the shape of an enterprise workload migration:

• Make an inventory of workloads you consider • Determine security and recovery needs,
moving to the cloud. including SLAs and RTO/RPO points.
• Identify usage base. • Research legal implications (that is,
• Calculate compute, network, and compliance).
storage costs. • Choose your cloud provider.

The Type of Migration:

Choosing a Method
After you have determined the needs of your enterprise Retiring and retaining don’t get the application to the
workload in the cloud, it is time to determine the type of cloud, so we’ll focus on the four options that take existing
migration that best meets those requirements. Currently workloads and can go between the IaaS and PaaS
there are two main routes that your migration can follow: categories: rehost, replatform, refactor, and repurchase. With
infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service IaaS you can rehost (“lift and shift”) or replatform (“lift, tinker,
(PaaS). IaaS uses cloud-based virtual machines that and shift”), and with PaaS you can refactor or repurchase.
customers can use and configure on their own as they see fit
in terms of runtime, operating system, and middleware. With The PaaS options are different. With refactoring, your
PaaS, those virtual machines are configured by the service workload code is run on your cloud provider’s service.
provider itself and then offered to the customer. The drawback here is that you might lose some of the
functionality that you once had, because the cloud provider
AWS pioneered a large part of cloud culture, and they infrastructure differs from your own. An additional drawback
famously identified six migration strategies for to a refactoring is that you need to recreate your APM
applications:
processes. A refactoring means rewriting the code for
your application from scratch, which aligns your workload
Retire will see the application and workload reach the most closely to the cloud provider’s services. However, a
end of its life rebuild might also mean vendor lock-in with that provider.
Repurchasing means scrapping the application you have
Retire
Retain will
keepsseethe
theapplication
applicationinand
theworkload reach
data center, theno
with previously worked with in favor of a provider’s SaaS offering.
end ofto
move itsthe
lifecloud (currently) While this option may take less time than a refactor, it comes
with the same potential loss of existing functionality, in
Rehost also known as the “lift and shift,” moves the addition to totally giving up control over the application itself.
application intact to run on cloud resources
Between these four options, the fastest way to get an
Replatform the code that runs your workload is slightly enterprise workload into the cloud and running is to go with
modified to meet the cloud deployment requirements
“lift and shift” rehosting. A refactoring rebuild is obviously
the most costly, risky, and time-consuming form
Repurchase involves moving to a cloud-based SaaS
of migration.
product over the existing application

Refactor requires a complete code rebuild of the

application to fundamentally take advantage of the cloud.

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 5

Another step to take at this stage is to build the leadership you use other third-party solutions, look into their availability
team that is responsible for carrying out the migration. This on your cloud provider’s marketplace. They might have
team can be selected from cloud supporters within the compatible cloud versions to use in your transition, but their
organization, or it can be done with the help of a managed use might also affect your existing agreements.
service provider. This team has to work closely with leaders
in departments all around your company, from the IT
department to marketing and sales teams, so it is important
that the team includes point persons who can relay the
migration plan’s goals and needs in each field. Key points to consider as you choose a
migration method:
The service provider that you choose should also be • Choosing the model that works best for your
consulted, because it can assist your move. Cloud providers enterprise workload
have expert teams that are available to give advice and
help you reorganize your architecture for cloud deployment,
• Cloud leadership team: finding the personnel
who can best manage the transition
with security and compliance needs in mind. For existing
NetApp storage system users, turning to NetApp at this • Service provider migration resources and
time is highly advantageous. NetApp has cloud solutions planning
such as Cloud Volumes ONTAP that work seamlessly with • Planning how existing infrastructure and
on-premises storage systems already in use at your data third-party solutions map out in the cloud
centers. Determining how to best transition those resources
is an important decision that NetApp can help you make. If

Testing the Workload

Testing how your workload runs in the cloud is the next Security is another concern to address during the testing
important step in the migration. Here you should build a process. It isn’t easy for many enterprise companies to
proof-of-concept model that allows you to see what the accept that their infrastructure partially or even entirely exists
real costs of operating the cloud are and validate that the under the control of some other company. There should
workload performance is acceptable in a test environment. be no gap between the level of security that you currently
This testing is to plan for the correct amount of services you use and the security you need to set up in the cloud. If
require to run efficiently, also known as “tuning.” anything, the migration should be a chance to increase your
security levels by considering additional security tools such
It is outside the scope of this handbook to detail the exact as Amazon VPC, Azure’s network security groups, and
differences between all of the storage formats, compute Google Virtual Private Cloud.
types, databases, and networking services that the different
cloud service providers make available, but it is important
that you are aware of these differences. Azure has a Key points at this stage:
handy guide to recognizing the differences between their • Figure out the total amount of storage and
services and those on AWS that gives some idea of what compute your workload needs
is available as you begin your research. Google Cloud has
• Determine your expected cloud costs
similar resources that compare their products and services,
including one for AWS and one for Azure. Understanding • Put your workload through tests
what your provider offers makes it clear whether or not your • Set security guidelines and control parameters
existing solution is integrable or upgradable in these regards.

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 6

Finding the Right Migration Solutions
This is where the heavy lifting gets done: the migration As the actual migration takes place, it is important to make
solutions necessary to bring an enterprise workload into the sure that there is no interruption of normal business for
cloud need to be powerful. Deciding on the wrong solution your workloads. Data must continue to be accessible to all
can set back the migration and even lead to customers, and updates to existing data must continue to
further headaches. take place as normal. The process should be carried out
as quickly as possible, but can effectively be broken down
There are multiple ways to move data to the cloud. Some into phases that see each workload element successfully
are native to the cloud service providers, others are open migrated and validated before moving on to the next.
source, and there are also third-party vendor solutions and You’ll also need to find a way to synchronize changes
services. There are also solutions unique to specific use that are made to the source data while the migration is
cases, such as databases and virtual machines. Migrating ongoing. A good way to manage the task is to employ data
data files is one of the most critical and challenging moves management solutions that can be found on your respective
that has to be orchestrated. When it comes to data, not only public cloud’s marketplace. Existing NetApp users benefit
does the initial migration have to be considered, but also from having Cloud Volumes ONTAP, which extends
keeping that data up to date and in sync with sources on the enterprise-level on-premises storage into the cloud through
premises and in backup locations. Time and costs are real NetApp SnapMirror® technology. In the next section we’ll
factors to consider. look in detail at what Cloud Volumes ONTAP and NetApp
can offer enterprises migrating workloads to the cloud.
Database migrations, for example, can be done with the help
of cloud-native services such as AWS Database Migration
Service (DMS) for moving to Amazon RDS from MySQL,
MS SQL, or PostgreSQL, and Azure Database Migration
Service, which can move SQL Server or on-premises Oracle Key points to have in mind before migration day:
databases to Azure’s SQL options. Google offers similar
• Find the right solution to carry out the migration
services for SQL migration with its fully managed Google
and provide support during the move
Cloud SQL and Cloud Spanner services
• Have plans in place for when the migration
For the largest migrations—for data that exists on a takes place, including contingencies for if
scale that would take years or even decades to transmit things go wrong
electronically—AWS offers AWS Snowball, AWS Snowball • Test as you go to make sure that
Edge, and AWS Snowmobile. Both Azure and Google everything works
Cloud Platform provide comparable offline bulk data transfer
services, namely Azure Data Box and Google Cloud
Transfer Appliance.

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 7

NetApp Solutions for Migrating
Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud
Because migrating an enterprise workload to the cloud CVS for GCP simplifies how you migrate and run enterprise
requires massive amounts of orchestration and support, workloads in Google Cloud with out-of-the-box capabilities
many companies turn to solution providers such as NetApp such as file sharing, multiprotocol support, high availability,
to aid in the migration and for continued data management data protection, and more.
and support of their enterprise workloads.
At the enterprise level, data management requires a
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP offers enterprise seamless way to orchestrate the cloud environment from
businesses a way to seamlessly transition their workloads a single pane-of-glass, where resources can be easily
into the cloud. Utilizing SnapMirror, Cloud Volumes ONTAP launched and deployed with the click of a button.
replicates files from on-premises NetApp storage systems
and brings them into the cloud. Available on AWS, Azure, For that, Cloud Volumes ONTAP comes with NetApp Cloud
and Google Cloud Platform, Cloud Volumes ONTAP is an Manager, the NetApp automation, orchestration, and
interface similar to the one that longtime NetApp storage management GUI. From Cloud Manager, tasks can easily be
system users are familiar with using, except now all of that carried out through a drag-and-drop interface that connects,
functionality has been updated for performance in the cloud. discovers, and manages resources throughout your
With the ability to support SMB and NFS file shares, and deployment, both on premises and in the cloud. Scheduling,
iSCSI SAN storage, enterprise workloads can effectively monitoring, and alert tools are all accessible through a single
leverage the cloud for all of their business demands. interface, so migration and maintaining a cloud deployment
do not mean a difficult management process.
Azure NetApp Files (ANF) is a fully managed Azure cloud-
native file storage service that provides NAS volumes over
NFS and SMB with all-flash performance. The service is
integrated with Azure portal and accessed via NetApp
Cloud Manager, REST API and Azure SDKs. Customers can
seamlessly migrate and run applications in the cloud without
worrying about procuring or managing storage infrastructure.

ANF simplifies storage management in Azure with

NetApp out-of-the-box capabilities including file sharing,
multiprotocol support, high availability, data protection, and
more.

NetApp® Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud (CVS

for GCP) is a fully managed GCP cloud-native file storage
service that provides NAS volumes over NFS and SMB with
all-flash performance. The service is integrated with Google
Cloud console and accessed via NetApp Cloud Manager
and REST API.

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 8

In a migration, it’s crucial to understand which data is
moving and where. NetApp Cloud Data Sense is a data
governance and classification tool that can automatically
discover, map, classify, and act on enterprise data, wherever
it’s stored—on-prem or in the cloud. With Data Sense, users
gain full visibility and control over data based on automated
and AI driven analysis of metadata and data context.

For companies planning migrations, these capabilities are

particularly useful in determining where private data you
have is stored so you can take the proper precautions to
protect it, in light of privacy regulations. It also makes it
possible to pinpoint duplicate and stale data so you can
carry out the kind of clean migration that will reduce your
costs to migrate to and operate in the new environment.
Sign up now to try Cloud Data Sense free for up to 1 TB
of data.

Cloud Sync is another NetApp solution for migrating data

(from systems other than ONTAP) to the cloud. As a file
transfer solution for companies migrating data to the cloud,
Cloud Sync offers much more than open-source tools such
as rclone and rsync, because it comes with a service’s
robust set of features. With automation for ongoing file
transfers, parallel processing for the fastest transfer speeds,
and data protection that never takes the data out of your
security boundaries, Cloud Sync turns the movement of data
into a task that companies can expect to be done affordably
and quickly.

The NetApp Data Migration Services for Cloud helps

customers to determine the best cloud transition strategy
and it tailors and executes large-scale data migration plans
to meet changing business needs.

Whether it’s Hybrid Cloud, Lift-and-Shift, or Cloud First, the

NetApp Data Migration Services for Cloud helps customers
migrate from legacy, on-premises environments to public
cloud-native storage with minimal business disruption
and while controlling migration costs and sustaining data
protection and regulatory compliance policies.

The packaged services include Discovery, Planning, Data

Movement, Testing/Validation, and Project Management.

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 9

Cloud Volumes ONTAP: Key Features
Cloud Volumes ONTAP has a suite of features that make deploying enterprise workloads using the cloud easy,
cost efficient, and safe, including:

High Availability. Data Tiering.

Two-node high availability with Cloud Volumes Automatic tiering of “cold” data between highly
ONTAP makes sure that when your enterprise performant disk storage to less-expensive
workload faces an outage, the redundant node object storage on Amazon S3, Azure Blob, or
takes over, keeping your RPO at zero and RTO Google Cloud Storage saves costs and optimizes
below 60 seconds. storage.

Data Mobility. Multiprotocol Access.

SnapMirror® data replication seamlessly Access to storage over protocol of choice—NFS/
transfers data from on-premises or other clouds, SMB/ iSCSI—allows the same storage service to
avoiding vendor lock-in. SnapMirror also helps be configured and used for file share as well as
to set up and continuously synchronize DR data block storage use cases.
copies.

Data Protection. High Performance.

Cost-effective NetApp Snapshot™ copies and Enhanced storage throughput through features
seamless disaster recovery capabilities keep like WAFL and cloud data caching, best suited
your files safe from failures or data corruption. for performance intensive production workloads.

Kubernetes and Containers Integration.

Hybrid and Multicloud.
With NetApp Trident, Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Cloud Manager gives users a single pane of
can be used to automatically provision
glass to seamlessly manage, maintain, and
persistent storage for stateful applications
monitor resources that span environments on
stored in Kubernetes and other containerized
AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and the data center
environments.
with drag-and-drop functionality or API calls.
Security and Safety.
Automation. Cloud Volumes ONTAP augments and integrates
RESTful API calls allow developers to treat with the cloud provider storage features like
Infrastructure as Code (IAC), speeding up the encryption at-rest and in-transit, VNET integration
dev/test workflow and cutting down TTM. for perimeter security, ransomware protection, and
cloud WORM (write once, read many) storage

Storage Efficiencies. Compliance.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP makes it possible to The AI-driven Cloud Compliance add-on scans
cut down on cloud storage costs through the all your data in order to map, identify, and report
use of several storage efficiency features, on sensitive private data that could fall under
including thin provisioning, data deduplication, regulatory scope of GDPR, CCPA, and other data
compression, and zero-capacity data clones. privacy legislation.

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 10

The Final Stage:
Keeping Tabs on the Cloud
for enterprise workloads meant maintaining secondary and
sometimes even tertiary physical backup sites to make sure
of data safety and compliance. The cloud still provides that
level of redundant protection, but in this case, you no longer
have the outlays of real estate, maintenance, orchestration,
security, and environmental controls involved with running
the backup sites. Data stored for backup purposes in the
cloud can be ready to use within seconds of a disaster
scenario, making sure of business continuity when you
would otherwise be in danger of missing your RPO and
RTO. Cost control is the main concern when it comes to
storing data for DR, and Cloud Volumes ONTAP is designed
specifically to do that. With storage efficiencies; easy
replication to your backup sites using SnapMirror; and tiering
cold data to inexpensive object storage until it’s needed,
The cloud is always changing. It’s one of its biggest features, Cloud Volumes ONTAP can play a crucial role in maintaining
but also a concern for enterprise businesses that have to a cost-effective DR plan.
keep up. The upkeep of your cloud deployment requires
Enterprise workloads have a particularly challenging set of
constant monitoring and awareness of these changes.
requirements, most of which have to deal with their scale.
Make sure that you have round-the-clock support both for
The sheer amount of data that has to be stored can eat up
your resources with the cloud provider and with your own
an entire IT budget. Managing to keep these costs as low as
deployment.
possible is an ongoing task for any enterprise workload in
Your SLAs with the cloud provider should be carefully the cloud. More than just business continuity, your industry
monitored. SLAs are contract-bound expectations of service might have compliance requirements and regulations that
that cover everything from compliance to security and demand a level of redundant storage for certain types of
performance. Not every product from the same provider has data, no matter how much that costs your company. Once
the same SLA, and it is important to be aware of these. The again, a solution such as Cloud Volumes ONTAP makes
SLA for Amazon EC2, for example, clearly says that every meeting these goals achievable and effective.
reasonable effort will be made by AWS to provide the service
at a 99.95% availability. That in itself is not a guarantee, and
that is where monitoring on your part has to take place.
Points to keep in mind moving forward
Keeping tabs on the cloud means employing monitoring in the cloud:
services. On AWS there are AWS CloudTrail and Amazon
CloudWatch, while Azure provides this service through
• Be ready to adapt to constantly changing
platform updates
Azure Application Insights and Azure Monitor. Google
provides Cloud Monitoring, which aims to help users • Provide vigilant system monitoring and upkeep
monitor their cloud deployments, as well as identify and • Keep on top of SLAs to make sure you always
diagnose issues. NetApp users can also turn to Cloud get the performance you pay for and require
Insights to get in-depth analysis into the performance of their
• Adjust solutions to keep storage and disaster
cloud services and applications, not just the storage level.
recovery costs at a minimum
DR is another long-term planning goal for operating in the
cloud. Before the advent of the cloud, disaster recovery

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 11

Cloud Migration Case Studies with
Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Cloud Volumes ONTAP has helped thousands of • NetApp Snapshots for quick and cost-effective
companies in hundreds of industries take control of backups in the cloud that complies with a rigorous
their cloud migration and deployment. data restore objective of less than an hour.
• Leverage SnapManager® for SQL for crash-
consistent, application-aware backup copies with
little or no impact on their storage resources or
The Cordant Group application performance.

The Cordant Group is a UK company that started • A robust and cost-effective cloud disaster recovery
in security services and later expanded into facilities solution with automatic failover and failback
management as well as recruitment. With 190+ capabilities when things go wrong.
locations and 5,000+ clients throughout the UK— • The ability to provision both NAS and SAN storage,
and growing—the company has an extensive IT with support and multi-protocol access for SMB/
infrastructure. CIFS, NFS, and iSCSI.
• Single-pane centralized management of their
As part of a strategic decision to shift from a CAPEX
hybrid architecture via NetApp Cloud Manager.
to an OPEX model, the company had already migrated
its infrastructure to a private isolated section on AWS.
However, the company found itself restricted to the In short, by migrating and then managing their data
use of Windows DFS to manage its server resources. with Cloud Volumes ONTAP, the Cordant Group
Another challenge was related to SQL databases that achieved the scalability they needed to grow their
held business-critical information. business, realized storage efficiencies and cost
As a veteran NetApp customer, they were able to use savings of 40-50%, gained the flexibility of a hybrid
SnapMirror technology to easily replicate data from its architecture, and could rest assured that their data was
physical storage infrastructure to the AWS public cloud protected wherever it resided.
and reap the following benefits:

Read the full case study here

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 12

McKesson
McKesson is the largest healthcare company in the • Improved cloud performance at a much lower cost.
United States, distributing one-third of all medications • More responsiveness, so its IT team can effectively
across North America. The company needed a platform address the needs of developers and business units.
for developing, testing, and deploying their fulfillment and
logistics applications at scale and at speed, but was feeling
• Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) by using Azure
Site Recovery to replicate applications and virtual
constrained by the managed private cloud solution it was
machines.
using. They found the scale and advanced data management
features they needed in Azure and NetApp. • Seamless integration across the hybrid deployment with
SnapMirror and Cloud Volumes ONTAP replicating on-
The McKesson IT team adopted a data fabric strategy. The premises data to Azure.
team uses NetApp AFF and NetApp E-Series flash storage
in its data center while its public cloud is powered by Cloud
Volumes ONTAP in Azure. Today, McKesson benefits from:

Read the full McKesson case study here

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 13

AdvancedMD
AdvancedMD provides a SaaS medical office workflow • Easy lift and shift of their SQL database and their file
solution that automates manual front office and billing shares, with no need to change their infrastructure
processes, maintains always-accessible electronic medical architecture.
and health records, and promotes patient engagement. With • High availability dual-node redundancy for AWS and
AdvancedMD deployed, physicians can focus on improving for Azure to provide minimal downtime in failures or
patient care, with the added bonus of increased revenue upgrades, a critical requirement when dealing with
because their practice is running more efficiently. important healthcare data.

When AdvancedMD was spun off from its parent company, • Storage efficiencies, such as data deduplication,
ADP, they had to quickly move all their data out of the ADP compression, and compaction as well as thin
data center. As ADP was an existing user of NetApp storage provisioning, automated data tiering, and instantaneous
technology in-house, AdvancedMD decided to use Cloud data cloning to writable volumes with zero impact on
Volumes ONTAP for AWS for moving to the cloud. The key storage footprints.
benefits that they gained were: • The intuitive Cloud Manager interface, with simple lift-
and-shift drag-and-drop operations, as well as support
for data management automation and orchestration.
• During the migration and afterwards: Enterprise-level
data protection and encryption (especially important for
sensitive healthcare data, HIPAA regulations) without
sacrificing scalability or agility.

Read the customer blog here

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 14

Summary
This handbook provided a good idea of what can happen
along the way to bringing an enterprise workload into the
cloud, whether that’s on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud
Platform. Hopefully with the answers you found here, you’ll
be able to make the next steps toward the cloud. For every
step of the enterprise workload migration process, we’ve
also shown how NetApp has a solution that is proven to
help make the transition safe, cost-effective, and fast.

Migrations pose tough challenges that can be met with

a careful strategy and the right resources at hand. With
NetApp solutions such as Cloud Volumes ONTAP, Cloud
Manager, Cloud Sync, and Cloud Insights, you’ll find the
service and solution you need to effectively make the
transition of your enterprise workload to the
cloud a success.

Start a free
trial today with
Cloud Volumes
ONTAP

Start now

The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 15

Refer to the Interoperability Matrix Tool (IMT) on the NetApp Support site to validate that the exact product and feature versions described
in this document are supported for your specific environment. The NetApp IMT defines the product components and versions that can be
used to construct configurations that are supported by NetApp. Specific results depend on each customer’s installation in accordance with
published specifications.

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The NetApp Guide to Migrating Enterprise Workloads to the Cloud 16