Lift-and-Shift Cloud Migration
Sometimes the priority is simply to get out of a data centre before a lease ends or hardware fails, and a deep refactor would take too long. Lift-and-shift rehosts your servers to the cloud largely as they are, delivering speed and a clean exit. We do it methodically so the move is fast without being reckless, and we leave you positioned to optimise afterwards.
When lift-and-shift is the right call
Rehosting suits situations where time matters more than redesign: a looming data-centre exit, ageing hardware, or a need to prove cloud viability quickly. It moves applications with minimal change, so it carries less project risk than refactoring and delivers results sooner. We are candid about its trade-off, namely that you do not immediately gain cloud-native efficiencies, and we identify which workloads are genuinely good rehost candidates versus those better replatformed. This keeps the engagement focused on what lift-and-shift does well rather than overpromising transformation.
Discovery and migration planning
Even a straightforward rehost fails without knowing what depends on what, so we inventory servers, applications, and their interconnections, capturing performance baselines to size targets correctly. Dependencies are grouped into migration waves so tightly coupled systems move together and avoid mid-migration breakage. We define cutover windows, rollback plans, and validation tests for each wave. The result is an ordered plan that turns a daunting data-centre exit into a sequence of manageable, low-surprise moves with clear success criteria for every step.
Automated replication and cutover
We use block-level replication tooling to copy servers continuously to the cloud while the originals keep running, so the actual cutover is short. Each wave is tested in the cloud target before going live, confirming the application behaves and connectivity is correct. At cutover we sync the final changes, switch traffic, and run smoke tests, with a defined rollback if validation fails. This approach keeps downtime to a brief, planned window rather than an extended outage, which matters when the systems being moved still serve the business daily.
Post-migration validation and next steps
Once workloads are running in the cloud, we validate performance against the baselines taken beforehand, confirm monitoring and backups are in place, and decommission source infrastructure only after a stabilisation period. Crucially, we hand over a prioritised list of post-migration optimisations: rightsizing, managed-service adoption, and resilience improvements you can pursue now that the urgent move is done. Lift-and-shift gets you to the cloud quickly, and this roadmap ensures it becomes a foundation to build on rather than a like-for-like copy frozen in place.
What You Get
- Workload discovery with dependency grouping
- Wave-based rehost plan with rollback procedures
- Automated server replication to the cloud
- Tested cutovers with minimal downtime
- Post-migration performance validation
- Optimisation roadmap for after the move
Why Teams Choose Turn Global
- Fast route out of a data centre or off old hardware
- Lower project risk than a full refactor
- Continuous replication keeps cutover downtime brief
- Optimisation roadmap so the move is a foundation
Ready to Start?
Contact our team and we will send the best implementation plan for your business.