Google Cloud migration services cover the tools, best practices, and expert support for moving workloads to the cloud, whether that means a straightforward lift-and-shift or a full re-architecture. Which approach fits depends on how much time you have and how much of the cloud-native benefit you actually need on day one.
Three Migration Strategies
- Rehost (“lift and shift”) — move apps to VMs with minimal code changes. Fastest path, but limited cloud-native benefit and possible cost inefficiency if left as-is long term.
- Replatform — containerize or adjust parts of the app without a full rewrite. Better performance for moderate effort, with some learning curve.
- Refactor — re-architect around managed databases, serverless, or microservices. Maximum scalability and ongoing cost savings, but the highest upfront effort and the most demanding on team skills.
Rehosting tends to win when speed matters most; refactoring pays off when the workload will run long-term and benefits from real cloud-native scaling.
Planning the Move
A solid plan documents your applications, data stores, network setup, and compliance requirements before anything moves, Google’s Migration Evaluator can automate the inventory and cost estimate. From there, define clear goals (time to market, security, lower total cost of ownership) so you can prioritize which workloads move first, and build buffer time into the schedule for the pilot, proof of concept, and full cutover phases.
Tools
Migrate for Compute Engine automates VM replication and cutover for lift-and-shift moves; Migrate for Anthos containerizes VMs on the fly for teams modernizing onto Kubernetes. For large offline data transfers, Transfer Appliance moves data via a secure physical appliance rather than over the network, and workloads land in Google Cloud storage services once migrated.
Where Migrations Actually Go Wrong
The failure mode that shows up most often isn’t the technical cutover itself, it’s underestimating what depends on the thing being moved. A database migration that looks clean in isolation can still break a dozen scheduled jobs, reporting queries, or integrations that assumed the old connection string, IP range, or latency profile would never change. Documenting dependencies before the move, not just the applications and data stores themselves, but what else reads from or writes to them, catches most of these before they turn into a production incident during cutover weekend rather than during planning.
After the Move
Run a pilot on a non-critical workload first, validate performance, security, and access before scaling up, then cut over with a rollback plan ready. Post-migration, Google Cloud security services covers IAM, VPC Service Controls, and encryption, and committed-use discounts or right-sized VMs are the fastest way to bring costs in line with actual usage. For migrations that need dedicated hands, Google Cloud consulting services and Google Cloud managed services can take on the architecture work or the ongoing operations respectively.