Prepare a migrated application for production promotion

After a workload is promoted, production user traffic is routed to the migrated assets. Readiness activities provide an opportunity to prepare the workload for that traffic. The following are a few business and technology considerations to help guide readiness activities.

Validate the business change plan

Transformation happens when business users or customers take advantage of a technical solution to execute processes that drive the business. Readiness is a good opportunity to validate the business change plan and to ensure proper training for the business and technical teams involved. In particular, ensure that the following technology-related aspects of the change plan are properly communicated:

• End-user training is completed (or at least planned).
• Any outage windows have been communicated and approved.
• Production data has been synchronized and validated by end users.
• Validate promotion and adoption timing; ensure timelines and changes have been communicated to end users.

Final technical readiness tests

Ready is the last step prior to production release. That means it is also the last chance to test the workload. The following are a few tests that are suggested during this phase:

• Network isolation testing. Test and monitor network traffic to ensure proper isolation and no unexpected network vulnerabilities. Also validate that any network routing to be severed during cutover is not experiencing unexpected traffic.
• Dependency testing. Ensure that all workload application dependencies have been migrated and are accessible from the migrated assets.
• Business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) testing. Validate that any backup and recovery SLAs are established. If possible, perform a full recovery of the assets from the BCDR solution.
• End-user route testing. Validate traffic patterns and routing for end-user traffic. Ensure that network performance aligns with expectations.
• Final performance check. Ensure that performance testing has been completed and approved by end users. Execute any automated performance testing.

Final business validation

After the business change plan and technical readiness have been validated, the following final steps can complete the business validation:

• Cost validation (plan versus actual). Testing is likely to produce changes in sizing and architecture. Ensure that actual deployment pricing still aligns with the original plan.
• Communicate and execute cutover plan. Prior to cutover, communicate the cutover and execute accordingly.

Next steps

After all readiness activities have been completed, its time to promote the workload.

What is required to promote a migrated resource to production?