Building a Robust Data Migration Strategy: Planning for Success

At some point, your organization or enterprise may need to migrate its data from one storage system to another. This could be due to an upgrade to a legacy system, website consolidation, data center relocation, or infrastructure maintenance.

Data migration can enhance your operational efficiency, data quality and governance, and business intelligence. It is essential to have a strategy to achieve this. In this blog post, we’ll examine the types of data migration strategies and how to create an effective one.

Types of Data Migration Strategies

A data migration strategy provides direction on handling data migration, identifies key stakeholders involved, and outlines the approach. It also indicates the data migration timeline and risk management process. Below, we’ve simplified the different data migration strategies your organization can adopt.

1. Big Bang Migration Strategy

Organizations use this strategy to list the steps in migrating their data to a different storage system. This occurs in a single operation and schedule. In other words, the strategy uses a single session and is not extended over a period. It can be done during scheduled downtime or on a weekend.

Once the migration occurs, the old storage system is shut down. The strategy enables rapid migration and is easy to plan. On the other hand, if an issue arises during migration, it can hurt the organization. The strategy is also not suitable for businesses that run 24/7.

2. Parallel Migration Strategy

This strategy involves running two (old and new) systems simultaneously during data migration. By doing so, an organization can transition to the new storage system after testing. They can also compare the systems, fix existing issues, and reduce business disruption. Yet, the strategy requires more resources and can confuse users if two storage systems are in place.

3. Lift-and-Shift Migration Strategy

This involves migrating data in its original form from one environment to another, without rearchitecting the system. The strategy facilitates easy and fast migration. It is suitable when moving to new hardware or the cloud. Despite this, it transfers inefficiencies from an old system to the new one.

4. Trickle Migration Strategy

Here, businesses move data in phases over a period. Suppose you’re an American company with three offices, moving customers from one email marketing software to another.

You can move the New York customers first, then the California customers, and finally those in Massachusetts. The trickle strategy is easy to test and spot errors fast. Yet, it requires more time, data syncing tools, and moving parts.

5 Ways to Create an Effective Data Migration Strategy

Moving data from one environment to another requires careful planning for success. What should you ascertain to create a workable data migration strategy? We discuss them below:

1. Migration Objectives

Decide on the data to migrate and the volume (all or part). Then, specify which environment you’re moving to. It could be the cloud, structured storage such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server, or a data warehouse like Amazon Redshift.

Also, know why you’re migrating. Are you migrating to save costs, scale, improve performance, or enhance data security?

2. Assess Systems and Clean Data

Understand the quality, volume, and structure of the data in your source system. Then, learn the structure and requirements of your target system (data migration destination). As you prepare for migration, remove irrelevant, duplicate, and outdated data. 

3. Choose a Migration Strategy

This is where you select the data migration strategy that fits your business. If you’re a small business and need a simple migration, the big bang strategy is suitable.

Let’s say you’re a corporation undertaking a complex or large migration; you should consider using the trickle strategy. If you need the old and new systems to keep running, then use the parallel migration. If looking to use a new host or move to the cloud, the lift-and-shift strategy is fine.

4. Test and Migrate

Conduct a migration test to detect errors and determine system compatibility. It can also help you estimate migration duration and decide whether to change your migration strategy. Test types you can adopt are unit, system, or validation. Once the test is successful, you can execute the actual migration.

5. Validate, Monitor, and Document

After migration, check if the migrated data is accurate, complete, consistent, and usable. Then, monitor the new system to detect malfunctions or errors. Create a record of the migration process, decisions, scripts, and mapping rules. This step is essential for auditing, training, and future migrations.

Conclusion

Data migration helps businesses upgrade, scale, and get added security. To fully leverage these benefits, businesses must adopt effective data migration strategies. By following the strategy-creation steps we provided, you will be able to migrate data without issues. Want to learn more about data migration? Read our blog post on data migration strategy for software development.