2025-01-18 · 1 min read
Cloud migrations that keep the lights on
Practical notes from a Google Cloud to AWS move — containerization, cost levers, and the boring discipline of zero-downtime cutovers.
Cloud migrations succeed when the cutover is boring.
The exciting work happens earlier: inventorying services, containerizing workloads, validating autoscaling, and rehearsing rollback until it feels routine.
Inventory before ambition
List every dependency that can surprise you: scheduled jobs, object storage paths, secrets, DNS TTLs, and monitoring gaps. Migrations fail on the forgotten glue.
Optimize after stability
Cost savings from Docker and autoscaling are real, but chasing them mid-cutover is how you invent outages. Stabilize first, then turn the knobs.
Treat CI/CD as the migration vehicle
If deploys are manual, the migration will be manual forever. Automate the path you will walk during cutover, then walk it repeatedly in staging.