What Is Lift and Shift?
A software application or code base is removed from one environment and placed in another without a significant underlying design change in what is known as “lift and shift.” Let's understand this more by diving straight into the details, shall we? You must understand what needs to be lifted and shifted to do this. A team developed the application without prior experience with the technology stack used to build it. That was a bit crazy, but we can learn from their mistakes! This meant they had no experience with successfully lifting and shifting their app into a new environment—something that most developers have done many times before. This project aimed to figure out how best to do this. The client had already tried several approaches and wanted us to help determine the most successful strategy. Many legacy migration projects have preferred the lift and shift approach. It must be contrasted with other choices. Re-architecting, for example, describes a scenario where the application or codebase is fundamentally restructured to function in a new environment. Another option is re-factoring, in which an application is altered when it gets to the cloud. The lift and shift approach can be contrasted with these alternatives by considering their pros and cons. Lift and shift have the advantage of being a more conservative strategy that avoids many risks associated with re-architecting or re-factoring. It also provides a way to move from one environment to another without learning something new or starting from scratch. However, lift and shift do have some drawbacks as well. For example, if there are any issues with performance or scalability, then this approach will not be able to solve them. In contrast, re-architecting or re-factoring could help resolve these problems by leveraging new technologies that weren’t available when the original application was written.
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