#migration testing strategy

Businesses have resorted to digital transformation in a big way to stay competitive, increase productivity, reduce the cost of operations, and improve the security of data and information. Also, the changing dynamics of business has led to mergers and acquisitions, which besides being an integral facet of digital transformation has necessitated the transfer of data and information - from the legacy systems to the new age systems, notably the cloud. However, the endeavour of organizations to deliver data and information in the right format and to the right set of people has made migration testing a necessity.

The process of migration is not always smooth and consists of many challenges. Unless these challenges are met head on with careful planning and by implementing best practices, they can create hurdles in the smooth migration of systems, applications, and databases.

Migration challenges

1. Workloads: Not every workload is designed to work or stored in the same way. Some can be tailormade to work on a cloud platform whereas others might work seamlessly on-premise or in a hybrid system. The migration testing approach should take these into account while validating the strategy.

2. Applications: Like systems, applications are critical to your business as well. The migration testing strategy should take into account the nature of dependencies of these applications and the risks involved. The strategy should assess the support needed for such applications to function effectively post migration. The focus of the migration team should also be geared towards conducting user acceptance and performance testing exercises.

3. Data migration: While migrating data to other systems, care should be taken to ensure their security and integrity. The data migration testing exercise should monitor and manage the databases based on the order they are needed by the systems or applications to function. As far as ensuring the security and integrity of data are concerned, the migration process should strictly adhere to the security protocols and regulations.

Once the above mentioned challenges are mitigated, then the crucial task of initiating a data center migration should be undertaken. At the outset, the allotted budget should be revisited to assess the cost of manpower or the required real estate to carry out migration. Migrating your data center can be an onerous exercise, which through proper planning and implementing best practices can be done smoothly. Let us find out how in five effective ways the testing of data migration can be achieved.

#1 Scope of migration: Carry out an assessment of the systems and applications that are to be migrated. Create a list of items to be migrated either to the cloud or to the new IT environment. It is not necessary to move each and every bit and piece of your IT architecture but only the crucial ones that are needed by your organization to function seamlessly. Also, take into account the criticality of downtime in the entire scheme of things.

#2 Transportation of systems: The migration exercise might involve replacing your ageing legacy systems with the new ones or transporting them to a new location. Your migration testing approach should assess the stability of the IT platforms to ensure they do not malfunction post transportation. It would be a good idea to keep a new system in place should something go wrong during migration.

#3 Know your data: Analyse the criticality of your databases and ascertain how they can impact the overall IT operations. List the order of databases to be migrated and ensure their security and integrity. This is arguably the most critical part of migration, as any loss or manipulation of data during migration can have dire consequences for the organization.

#4 Establish your network: If your IT architecture is to be moved to the cloud then the robust functioning of your IT network is of primary importance. The cloud migration testing should validate the communication of the network at the new location. Merely transplanting your existing network to the new location might not suffice. The network configuration at the new location should be redrawn to ensure its effective functioning.

#5 Engage your stakeholders: It is better to engage third party services in your migration exercise. The testing exercise should find out if the existing resources are capable enough to carry out the job. Involve the third parties in setting up your migration strategy and keep them updated on the timelines.

Conclusion

The migration of your IT infrastructure is a painstaking process and requires thorough planning and execution. This is where a suitable migration testing strategy can be of help in removing the bottlenecks, streamlining processes, and prioritizing activities. It can preempt your organization from any unforeseen trouble.

Digital enterprises have to constantly adapt to the changing dynamics of the technology landscape where the shelf life of technology stacks has become limited. This is due to the disruptive impact of the new technology paradigms that emerge to meet the demands of speed, quality, flexibility, timeliness and cost. As a consequence, enterprises are forced to migrate to the new technology platforms along with their data centres and applications. They do so to remain relevant and to meet the challenges of a dynamic digital environment including the ones arising out of mergers and acquisitions.

All said and done, if the industry figures are anything to go by, migration is a fairly complex and risky process where the chances of failure far outweigh the success rate.

Factors leading to a migration failure?

Loss of data: The migration process can result in the loss or corruption of data. This can even crash the applications, software or systems. The likely reason for such an eventuality could be the following:

An improper assessment of data and the system challenges

Lack of encryption of data during the migration process

Inadequate backup or the absence of a data recovery process

Data inconsistency: Changes made to the source database or application can render the target database or application incompatible with each other. The resultant inconsistency of data can turn any mission critical application ineffective.

Inadequate understanding of dependencies: Each field, variable and object in a database is interdependent. If the migration process does not take into account the behaviour of dependencies beforehand, the migration outcome can turn out to be faulty and inconsistent.

Unplanned downtime: Any unplanned downtime experienced during migration can extend the migration time and result in cost overruns. This calls for a trial migration conducted in a controlled environment before the actual exercise.

Since the failure of migration can cause substantive losses to the enterprise, migration testing should be carried out in right earnest. The losses can range from losing critical business data, crashing of applications and IT systems, and the failure to meet turnaround times and compliance regulations to the loss of client/customer trust and ROI.

What is Migration Testing?

It is a quality assurance process whereby various aspects of migration are tested in a controlled environment. The migration testing approach adopted by the QA team can successfully identify the issues and pre-empt any possible impact. A suitable migration testing approach can result in risk mitigation leading to better outcomes.

Key features of migration testing

Planning: Build a QA testing plan covering the entire phalanx of data, applications, processes, and legacy systems. The plan should be based on the business requirements.

Forming a team: The migration testing approach should form a team comprising of all the stakeholders — management, IT, and operations. The team should be upskilled on the applications and systems the business will use post migration. The team should be familiarized with the scope of migration based on data migration testing. Importantly, the team should be apprised of the benefits and the time frame of migration.

Review: The QA team should review the results of data migration testing and apply corrective action for dealing with the failures in the next test iteration.

Evaluation of risks: The entire migration can lead to certain risks related to business or compliance. The same should be evaluated and taken into account while drawing the strategies for migration.

Create a reporting mechanism: The data or application migration testing exercise should have a robust reporting mechanism. The report should record each and every result of test iteration.

The five reasons that make testing data migration critical

The testing process identifies the risks and bugs that can disrupt the entire migration exercise

It identifies the areas where data inconsistency can lead to the crashing of applications and systems

It leads to a seamless transition from the legacy systems to the new systems

It pre-empts any system failure or data loss

It validates if the entire migration exercise complies with the requirements laid down by the regulatory bodies

Conclusion

The high risk impact of migration on business means the entire exercise should proceed with due diligence. Carrying out the testing of data migration is a critical part of the due diligence process that helps in risk mitigation and ensures a seamless transition to the new system.