You’ve now successfully migrated to the cloud. Congratulations, it’s now time to measure your success and properly implement cloud management and governance policies. But how do you go about achieving that exactly? What are the important post-migration KPIs you need to measure your success?
Well in this final part of our FORTE CLOUD journey, we discuss post-migration KPIs to measure your success. And talk about some cloud management best practices to get you started on the right path.
Post-Migration KPIs to Measure Your Success
Most companies migrate to the cloud to address specific challenges. To measure the success of your migration against these goals, you need to establish some key performance indicators (KPIs) first. These post-migration KPIs must outline the improvements you expect and want to gain from the cloud.
Now, let’s look at the important post-migration KPIs that you need to measure to see if specific, measurable goals are met:
Performance metrics
Response Time
It is the amount of time it takes for your system to perform an individual transaction or query. It starts from the moment a user’s request is sent until the application indicates that the request is completed. This measures your application’s speed and performance from the perspective of the user. There are two metrics to pay attention to here:
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- Average Response Time (ART): Measures the average of every round-trip request/response over a certain specified period.
- Peak Response Time (PRT): Measures the longest request/response cycle in a specified period.
Server Performance Metrics
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- CPU utilization: It measures the amount of CPU used by an application to process a request. It’s expressed through a percentage, indicating how much capacity is being used by an application. If the CPU usage is close to 100% then it could be indicative of a bigger problem, and you will need to pay attention to it immediately.
- Memory utilization: It measures the amount of memory used by an application to process a request; it’s expressed through a percentage. Another way to measure it is through a ratio of a Resident Set Size (RSS) to the physical memory.
- Load average: It measures CPU demand, which is the average number of processes that can run over a specified period.
Application and Service Availability (Uptime)
Uptime refers to the percentage of time the application or server is online, available, and running smoothly. It’s often expressed with a percentage where the higher the percentage is, the less downtime you’ll have. Ideally, you want to achieve the coveted “four nines” as it means that your application is only down for about 52 minutes per year.
End-user experience
Error rates
Error rates refer to the number of problem requests or HTTP status codes indicating an error. It’s often expressed as a percentage that shows the number of errors against the total number of problem requests. There are three types of errors you will come across:
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- HTTP error percentage shows you the number of requests that ended in error.
- Logged exceptions show you the number of logged and unhandled application errors.
- Thrown exceptions show you the number of exceptions that have been thrown.
Latency
This shows you the delay between a user request and the application response. The higher it is, the longer the delay. So, you’ll want it to be as low as possible.
Customer satisfaction scores (CSAT)
This measures user overall experience and satisfaction. After migration, this shows you how the migration impacted individual workflow, what friction points were added or eliminated, as well as how the end-user feels about the migration. There are various ways for you to measure it, including usability tests, feedback surveys, polls, interviews, and focus groups.
Security metrics
Data exposures
This measures how weak or inadequate your server or applications data protection is.
Network I/O
Network input/output or Network I/O measures the average utilization of network bandwidth for all monitored network devices. It’s especially useful for detecting security issues, like unauthorized access or potentially malicious traffic.
User audit
This measures the number of users accessing your server or application as well as what information and resources they accessed during each session.
S3 accessibility
By default, your S3 bucket is only accessible by the owner, however as you’re extending your S3 permission to your team and in some cases, third-party services, you might be putting your data at risk. This is why you must keep an eye on these permissions to maintain data integrity.
Indicators of compromise (IOCs)
IOCs show you the number of unusual activities that raise red flags for possibly malicious activity on your network, server, or application.
Cloud Management Best Practices
Now that we’ve talked about the baseline metrics to measure the success of your migration, let’s talk about some tips to successfully manage your environment. And if you want a more in-depth discussion on cloud management and governance then check out this blog from us.
1. Track Your Consumption and Budget:
A common mistake businesses make is treating the cloud like a utility where they only pay the bill at the end of the month without going through their expenses. As a result, this leads to you paying more than when you were on-premises. Public cloud providers have various pricing options that could save a lot of money, but they won’t outright tell you that. So, you’ll need to keep a close eye on your usage and consumption trends and see what other options would work best.
2. Automate management:
One advantage to the cloud is automation, understand it so you can utilize it to your advantage. Through it, you can duplicate, secure, and quantify your data, as well as utilize any management tools you might be using. Your infrastructure is faster, more secure, and more efficient with automation. It’s a must if you want to stay competitive.
3. Outsource to a Managed Service Provider (MSP):
As cloud management is a difficult and important task, it’s better to leave it to a professional. An effective and qualified provider will help you with IT problems, clean up any issues, and help your operation achieve better success. While it may not seem obvious, your IT is integral to achieving your bottom line. So, the smart choice for you might be to outsource your cloud management to a professional.
FORTE CLOUD is an advanced AWS partner that offers you a set of services and tools that automate infrastructure management tasks for Amazon Web Services (AWS) deployments. We aim to simplify cloud management for your teams so you can focus on your core business goals. By partnering with us, you’re guaranteed to receive excellent service as we were named APN AWS Partner two consecutive years in a row for exceptional performance & commitment to the AWS customers.
Conclusion
Now you have all the necessary tools to successfully manage your cloud environment. And with this final article, our FORTE CLOUD series of articles comes to an end. Now, you should know all there is to know about cloud computing or at least all the essentials.
If you feel that you’re now ready to face the massive task of migrating to the cloud, we would love to be part of your journey. Contact our team and we will guide you through the process step-by-step.
