What are the best practices for migrating an on-premises server to the cloud with minimal downtime a

[AZAPI]

We are planning to migrate an on-premises server to a cloud environment and would like guidance on the best approach.

Our goal is to minimize downtime, maintain application availability, and reduce migration risks. The application includes a database and serves business-critical workloads.

We would appreciate recommendations on:

• Lift-and-shift vs re-platforming approaches

• Data migration and synchronization strategies

• Minimizing downtime during cutover

• Backup and rollback planning

• Security and compliance considerations

• Monitoring and performance validation after migration

• Common challenges and lessons learned from similar projects

We are evaluating AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud and would like to understand which migration tools and practices have worked best for others.

Any advice, documentation, or real-world experiences would be greatly appreciated.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @AZAPI 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Atlassian provides quite a bit of documentation about migration journey options through these links:

https://www.atlassian.com/migration/plan/cloud-guide#introduction

https://support.atlassian.com/migration/resources/

Down time can mean many things and can depend on multiple factors:

• how much data do you need to move?
• do you have integrations with other systems?
• do you use third party plugins?
• do you have Automation rules?

You did not mention which Atlassian apps you need to migrate, and did not post your question in an app specific forum. 

Atlassian does provide some automated Cloud Migration Assistant apps such as the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant . Those are usually the best tools to use if you meet the requirements.

However, there are limitations to the app's capabilities so you need to carefully and thoroughly review the documentation.

For example, the tool may not be able to move data generated through use of third party plugins. You will need to review the information provided by each plugin vendor to find out if there is a Cloud-compatible version of that plugin and what the migration path is.

You also need to review documentation for Jira and for each plugin for information on feature parity. Not all capabilities available in the Server/DC version of the apps is available in the Cloud version of the apps.

If you have security concerns you should get your Security team involved early in reviewing the security documentation available from Atlassian and from each plugin vendor.

And, of course, you should plan to do one or more test migrations using a copy of your server/DC instance and a test Cloud destination to discover challenges and problems you did not discover from your review of documentation.

If you think this sounds overwhelming you might want to consider engaging an Atlassian Solution Partner with a specialization in Cloud migrations. There is a directory you can use to find a partner that serves your geographic area and has such a specialization.

Disclosure: I work for Praecipio, an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner with a specialization in Cloud Migrations. Our team can help you in any or all phases of your migration journey from assessing and planning through execution and post migration support. You can learn more and reach out to us through the Atlassian Cloud Migrations page on our website.