Migrating to STRRATUS: A Step-by-Step ChecklistMigrating to a new platform like STRRATUS can unlock performance, scalability, and collaboration gains — but only if the move is planned and executed carefully. This step-by-step checklist walks you through preparation, execution, and post-migration validation so your migration is predictable, secure, and minimally disruptive.
Before you migrate: prepare and plan
1. Define goals and success criteria
- Identify why you’re migrating (cost, performance, features, consolidation, compliance).
- Set measurable success criteria: e.g., “reduce average API latency by 25%,” “cut hosting costs by 15%,” or “achieve full data consistency after migration.”
- Determine acceptable downtime or maintenance windows and rollback conditions.
2. Create a migration team and governance
- Assign roles: project owner, technical lead, data lead, security lead, QA, and communications.
- Establish decision rights and escalation paths.
- Document policies for change control, approvals, and sign-offs.
3. Inventory and map your environment
- Catalog applications, services, databases, integrations, third-party dependencies, and users.
- For each item capture: current architecture, data volumes, performance metrics, network requirements, and compliance constraints.
- Classify components by migration complexity (simple, moderate, complex) and business criticality.
4. Choose migration approach and timeline
- Options include lift-and-shift, re-platforming, or refactoring. Match approach to each component based on risk, time, and benefit.
- Create a migration timeline with milestones, buffer time for unexpected issues, and milestones for pilot, phased, and final cutover.
5. Assess compatibility and compliance
- Verify STRRATUS supports required OS, runtimes, databases, and middleware versions.
- Review security controls: encryption (in transit and at rest), IAM, logging, and audit capabilities.
- Ensure compliance requirements (GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2, etc.) can be met on STRRATUS.
6. Plan data migration and consistency strategy
- Choose data migration methods: bulk export/import, streaming replication, or hybrid (initial bulk + continuous sync).
- Define data validation checks and reconciliation processes.
- If zero-downtime is required, design a cutover strategy with replication and DNS/traffic switching.
7. Prepare networking and access
- Map required firewall rules, VPC/subnet designs, routing, and VPN/Direct Connect equivalents.
- Plan DNS changes and TTL adjustments for cutover.
- Create least-privilege IAM roles and access policies for teams and services.
8. Budget and procurement
- Estimate costs for compute, storage, network egress, and any managed services on STRRATUS.
- Include costs for migration tools, consulting, and temporary dual-running during cutover.
- Get approvals and procurement in place before execution.
Migration execution: pilot, migrate, test
9. Run a pilot or proof of concept
- Select a low-risk but representative service or dataset.
- Execute full migration steps: provisioning, deployment, data sync, and validation.
- Measure performance and operational differences. Update runbooks based on findings.
10. Provision STRRATUS environment
- Create required projects/accounts, VPCs, and storage buckets.
- Set up CI/CD pipelines, secret management, monitoring, and logging integrations.
- Implement baseline security controls (network segmentation, encryption, IAM).
11. Migrate infrastructure and services
- For lift-and-shift: package VMs/containers and deploy to STRRATUS, then reconfigure networking and storage.
- For re-platform/refactor: port services to managed services or containers, update configuration and deployment manifests.
- Verify service discovery, load balancing, and inter-service communication.
12. Execute data migration and validation
- Perform initial bulk transfer (if applicable) using secure channels and checksums.
- Start continuous replication if needed; monitor lag and error rates.
- Run validation scripts to compare row counts, checksums, and critical business queries.
13. Functional and performance testing
- Run automated test suites, integration tests, and end-to-end smoke tests.
- Load-test critical endpoints to confirm performance meets targets.
- Test failure modes: instance termination, network partition, and storage failures.
14. Security and compliance verification
- Perform vulnerability scans and configuration audits.
- Validate encryption keys, access logs, and audit trails are correctly captured.
- If required, run compliance audits or third-party assessments.
Cutover: switching traffic and finalizing migration
15. Communication and stakeholder readiness
- Notify end-users and stakeholders of the cutover schedule and expected impact.
- Ensure support teams are staffed and runbooks are accessible.
- Confirm rollback plan and who can authorize it.
16. Final sync and freeze
- Quiesce writes if needed, perform final incremental data sync, and verify reconciliation.
- Reduce DNS TTLs ahead of cutover if you’ll be switching DNS.
- Take backups and snapshots before making irreversible changes.
17. Switch traffic and validate
- Update DNS, load balancers, or routing to point to STRRATUS endpoints.
- Monitor traffic, error rates, latency, and business metrics in real time.
- Keep the old environment running in read-only mode for a safety window if possible.
18. Rollback criteria and execution
- Predefine specific metrics/triggers that require rollback (e.g., error rate > X%, failures with critical flows).
- If rollback is needed, reverse DNS/traffic, revert configuration, and restore any changed data from snapshots.
After migration: stabilize, optimize, and document
19. Post-migration verification
- Run final data validations and reconciliation for a full business cycle if needed.
- Confirm integrations with third parties operate correctly.
- Verify monitoring, alerts, and SLOs are functioning and tuned.
20. Decommission legacy resources
- Once confidence is reached, decommission old infrastructure to avoid duplicate costs.
- Ensure data retention and deletion policies are followed when removing backups or logs.
- Keep an archive of runbooks and incident reports for audits.
21. Optimize and modernize
- Identify quick wins for cost and performance: right-size instances, turn off unused services, and leverage managed services.
- Consider refactoring components to better fit STRRATUS capabilities (serverless, managed databases, CDN).
- Implement autoscaling and cost alerts.
22. Knowledge transfer and documentation
- Update architecture diagrams, runbooks, and onboarding guides.
- Conduct training sessions and record playbooks for common operational tasks.
- Hold a post-mortem to capture lessons learned and process improvements.
Checklist (Quick view)
- Define goals & success criteria — Done
- Form migration team & governance — Done
- Inventory & classify components — Done
- Choose migration approach and timeline — Done
- Verify compatibility & compliance — Done
- Plan data migration & validation — Done
- Provision networking & IAM — Done
- Run pilot migration — Done
- Provision STRRATUS environment — Done
- Migrate infra/services — Done
- Execute data sync & validate — Done
- Functional & performance testing — Done
- Security & compliance checks — Done
- Communicate cutover & staff support — Done
- Final sync, backups, & freeze — Done
- Switch traffic & monitor — Done
- Rollback plan ready — Done
- Post-migration verification — Done
- Decommission legacy systems — Done
- Optimize, document & train — Done
If you want, I can turn this into a printable checklist PDF, a Trello board with tasks and owners, or generate command samples and IaC snippets for a specific stack (e.g., Kubernetes + PostgreSQL).
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