Cloud Modernization Strategies - Lift-and-shift migration vs temporary burst to cloud

Learn about cloud modernization strategies.

Organizations employ two complementary strategies for hybrid cloud adoption: workload migration and cloud bursting. While traditional migration involves the permanent relocation of applications and datasets to the cloud for modernization, cloud bursting dynamically extends a private data center into a public cloud. This provides temporary, on-demand compute to handle demand spikes, scaling back down as capacity needs subside.

These two strategies co-exist. Migration is a long-term approach for modernizing to cloud-native workloads, whereas bursting provides immediate compute elasticity for workloads that are retained on-premises, bypassing physical hardware procurement cycles.

To enable native cloud-bursting capability, Cloudera is introducing Cloudera Hybrid Environments. This new architecture is designed to provide cloud agility while leveraging existing infrastructure. It facilitates dynamic workload movement—as distinct from planned migration—by natively discovering and accessing datasets on-premises, all while strictly adhering to established on-premises security and governance protocols.

Feature	Cloud Burst / Remote Access Strategy	Data Replication / Migration Strategy
Primary Goal	Elastic scaling and temporary peak load handling. Extend existing on-premises resources temporarily.	Resilience, modernization, and geo-availability. Move workloads closer to the cloud environment.
Data Residency	Data stays on-premises. Only processing or temporary application components move to the cloud.	Data exists in two or more locations (on-premise and cloud) simultaneously.
Workload Type	Stateless or loosely coupled workloads. Compute-intensive tasks, batch processing, web tier scaling (e.g., VDI, render farms).	Stateful workloads. Databases, file systems, applications requiring fast, local data access (e.g., ERP, CRM).
Latency Tolerance	High tolerance for latency. Performance depends heavily on the network connection to the on-premises data center.	Low tolerance for latency. Data must be accessible quickly by cloud applications (since the data is local to the cloud environment).
Implementation	Setting up VPNs, dedicated network links (e.g., AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute), and configuring firewalls to allow remote access to on-premise databases.	Implementing Data sync tools (e.g., Cloudera Replication Manager), SAN replication, or specialized software-defined storage.
Cost Driver	Network egress fees. Moving large amounts of data from the cloud back to on-premise is expensive.	Cloud storage costs. Paying for duplicate storage space and the cost of the replication service itself.
Management Complexity	Network management. Ensuring a stable, low-latency, high-bandwidth connection between sites.	Data consistency management. Ensuring data integrity, conflict resolution, and synchronization lag between the two copies.
Disaster Recovery (DR)	Poor/non-existent. The cloud is only used for compute; if the on-premise data center fails, the application fails.	Excellent. The replicated data can be used to instantly spin up services in the cloud (Active-Passive or Active-Active DR).