Infrastructure performance management software provider Virtual Instruments is branching out by moving into the data migration business. This is a corner of the IT world that tends to make people wince when the topic comes up.
In an attempt to deal with this eternal problem, the young company on June 27 launched its Cloud Migration Readiness (CMR) service to help enterprises intelligently move to the cloud. The new CMR service provides enterprises with insights into the workload behavior of applications targeted for cloud migration.
It’s more or less an extension of what VI already does in keeping applications in good working order, in optimal performance mode and in compliance with all the rules and regulations the IT world brings to bear.
Simplifies Decision Processes
By combining workload discovery, dependency mapping and workload profiling, the CMR service is designed to simplify the decision-making process and reduce the time to migrate enterprises’ large number of diverse workloads, VI said.
The CMR service enables enterprises to simulate and validate cloud workload performance before migrating the workloads and determine if migrated workloads are performing adequately; it also charts out the steps to take if they aren’t. The CMR service includes the ability to select the optimal CPU, memory and network and storage configuration for each migrated workload using simulated workloads, VI said.
Users always face important questions related to cost and performance before initiating their migrations. Before the introduction of the CMR service, they were unable to confidently answer these questions. Using the CMR service, enterprises can:
- de-risk their upcoming cloud migrations;
- validate the suitability of the targeted applications based on their on-premises performance SLAs;
- understand application dependencies;
- preserve performance in the cloud; and
- compare and contrast estimated costs of various cloud platforms.
For many enterprises, moving specific applications to the cloud is a core pillar of their digital transformation strategy, because it offers significant value in terms of business agility, faster innovation and scalability. However, migrating legacy applications to the cloud is a major initiative for most enterprises, and they must answer crucial questions before carrying it out.
These questions include: Will business-critical applications perform as expected once in the cloud? How much it will cost to run those applications in the cloud? Which cloud provider makes the most sense for each application?
To successfully reduce cloud migration complexity, right-size cloud configurations and validate cloud performance, the CMR service defines four distinct phases:
- Discovery: Discover application workload characteristics and identify dependencies between installed computing, networking and storage elements.
- Profiling: Distill hundreds or thousands of workloads into a small set of representative synthetic workloads that accurately characterize performance.
- Playback: Accurately play back representative synthetic workloads in the cloud to select cost-optimal configurations and placements–without compromising workload performance.
- Monitor: Monitor actual workloads post migration to the cloud to identify any unforeseen performance or capacity issues.
Virtual Instruments’ Cloud Migration Readiness service is available now. For more information, go here.
