Lift and shift, also called rehosting, is a migration strategy in which an application is moved from its current environment to the cloud largely as it is. A server is copied or recreated as a cloud virtual machine, keeping the same operating system, configuration and architecture.
Why it matters
It is usually the fastest and least risky way to leave an aging data center or end a hosting contract, because the application code does not need rewriting. The drawback is that the result often fails to use cloud strengths such as auto scaling, managed databases and serverless services, so costs can be higher than expected and operational work stays the same. Many teams use lift and shift first, then improve pieces later through replatforming or refactoring.
Example
Before: 2 physical servers (web + database) in an office rack
After: 2 cloud virtual machines with the same software
Later: move the database to a managed service, add a load balancerCommon mistakes
- Choosing instance sizes to match old hardware instead of measuring actual usage.
- Expecting resilience; one VM is still a single point of failure.
- Treating it as the final step and never optimizing.
Related
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