Cloud Lift and Shift
No Change
hold
Cloud Lift and Shift. (rehosting) moves workloads to Cloud with little or no redesign.
Summary
Garden stance: We hold Cloud Lift and Shift for our estate.
Key points:
| Anti-pattern | Why it fails | Better direction |
|---|---|---|
| 1:1 service cloning across clouds | Highest cost, weakest differentiation | Pick best-of-breed per workload; document why it lives there |
| Migrating databases by dump/restore monthly | Downtime, drift, data egress bills | Managed replication, eventing, or stay put and strangle |
| “Same architecture everywhere” for compliance | Compliance follows controls, not SKU parity | Shared policy (DevSecOps, Policy as Code), different implementations |
| Lift VMs without autoscaling groups | Pay for peak 24/7 | Cattle Not Pets, instance templates, rightsizing |
| Chasing credits without TCO model | Credits expire; architecture remains | Model 3-year TCO including egress, support, and engineer time |
When rehost is acceptable: hard exit deadline from a datacenter, ISV appliance with no cloud-native path yet, or temporary landing zone with a written strangler plan and sunset date. Label it legacy containment, not the target architecture.
References
- Wikipedia: lift and shift
- Contrast: Hybrid Cloud (adopt) in this garden
Details
| Anti-pattern | Why it fails | Better direction |
|---|---|---|
| 1:1 service cloning across clouds | Highest cost, weakest differentiation | Pick best-of-breed per workload; document why it lives there |
| Migrating databases by dump/restore monthly | Downtime, drift, data egress bills | Managed replication, eventing, or stay put and strangle |
| “Same architecture everywhere” for compliance | Compliance follows controls, not SKU parity | Shared policy (DevSecOps, Policy as Code), different implementations |
| Lift VMs without autoscaling groups | Pay for peak 24/7 | Cattle Not Pets, instance templates, rightsizing |
| Chasing credits without TCO model | Credits expire; architecture remains | Model 3-year TCO including egress, support, and engineer time |
When rehost is acceptable: hard exit deadline from a datacenter, ISV appliance with no cloud-native path yet, or temporary landing zone with a written strangler plan and sunset date. Label it legacy containment, not the target architecture.
References
- Wikipedia: lift and shift
- Contrast: Hybrid Cloud (adopt) in this garden