What is lift and shift ?

Moving workloads to the cloud rarely follows a single path. Some organizations are redesigning applications to take advantage of cloud-native services, while others simply need to migrate quickly without disrupting business operations. If your priority is reducing migration time, minimizing risk, or exiting an on-premises data center, rebuilding every application from scratch is rarely practical.

A lift and shift strategy addresses this challenge by moving existing applications to cloud infrastructure with minimal changes to their architecture or code. It allows organizations to migrate faster while preserving existing workloads, creating a foundation for future modernization when the time is right.

This article explains what lift and shift means, how it works, its advantages and limitations, when it is the right migration strategy, and how to approach a successful migration.

How lift and shift works

Lift and shift is a cloud migration strategy that moves applications, virtual machines, databases, and supporting infrastructure from one environment to another with little or no modification. Rather than redesigning an application to use cloud-native services, organizations replicate the existing environment on cloud infrastructure and migrate workloads as they are.

In practice, this means preserving the application's architecture while changing where it runs. Servers become cloud instances, storage is migrated to cloud storage services, and networking is recreated in the target environment. Users continue interacting with the application in much the same way as before, while the underlying infrastructure changes.

This approach is often called rehosting, one of the "7 Rs" of cloud migration strategies. Unlike refactoring or rearchitecting, rehosting focuses on speed rather than optimization.

A typical lift and shift migration includes:

• Replicating virtual machines or physical servers.
• Migrating application data and databases.
• Recreating networking and security configurations.
• Validating application functionality after migration.
• Optimizing infrastructure settings once workloads are running successfully.

Because applications require minimal modification, organizations can significantly reduce migration timelines while limiting operational disruption.

Benefits of lift and shift

Lift and shift is popular because it provides a practical way to begin cloud adoption without introducing unnecessary complexity.

Its main benefits include:

• Faster migrations
  Applications can be moved without extensive redevelopment, allowing organizations to migrate large environments more quickly than cloud-native redesign projects.
• Lower migration risk
  Keeping the existing application architecture reduces the likelihood of introducing functional regressions during migration. Teams are working with familiar software rather than simultaneously managing infrastructure and application redesign.
• Reduced upfront investment
  Modernizing applications requires development resources, testing, and architectural planning. Lift and shift postpones those costs, enabling organizations to spread modernization efforts over time.
• Business continuity
  Critical business applications can continue operating with minimal interruption, making lift and shift suitable for organizations with strict availability requirements.
• A foundation for future modernization
  Migrating infrastructure first gives teams the flexibility to optimize workloads gradually. Once applications are running in the cloud, they can be modernized incrementally instead of through a large-scale transformation project.

It is worth noting that lift and shift does not automatically deliver every advantage associated with cloud-native computing. Applications that remain unchanged may not immediately benefit from autoscaling, managed services, or container-based architectures. These capabilities can be introduced later as part of an ongoing modernization strategy.

Lift and shift migration process

Although lift and shift minimizes application changes, successful migrations still require careful planning. A structured process helps reduce downtime and avoids configuration issues after migration.

Assess workloads

Begin by identifying which applications are suitable for rehosting.

Evaluate each workload according to factors such as:

• Infrastructure dependencies
• Operating system compatibility
• Storage requirements
• Network architecture
• Security and compliance obligations
• Performance expectations

Some legacy applications with tightly coupled hardware dependencies may require additional preparation before migration.

Plan the migration

Once workloads have been assessed, design the target cloud environment.

Planning typically includes:

• Selecting the target region
• Sizing compute resources
• Defining storage architecture
• Configuring networking
• Establishing identity and access management
• Preparing backup and disaster recovery policies

Organizations should also prioritize migration waves, starting with lower-risk applications before moving business-critical workloads.

Move applications and data

With the environment prepared, applications and datasets can be migrated.

Depending on the workload, this may involve:

• Replicating virtual machines
• Exporting and importing databases
• Synchronizing file storage
• Migrating application configurations
• Updating DNS records and networking

The objective is to recreate the production environment while keeping application behavior unchanged.

Test and optimize

Migration does not end once workloads are running.

After deployment, teams should verify:

• Application functionality
• Network connectivity
• Performance
• Security controls
• User authentication
• Monitoring and logging

Optimization can then focus on right-sizing infrastructure, improving resource utilization, and introducing managed cloud services where appropriate.

When to use lift and shift

Lift and shift is not the best choice for every workload, but it is often the most practical starting point.

It is particularly well suited when organizations need to:

• Exit an on-premises data center quickly.
• Reduce infrastructure maintenance.
• Refresh aging hardware.
• Accelerate cloud adoption.
• Support mergers or acquisitions.
• Improve disaster recovery capabilities.
• Meet business deadlines without redesigning applications.

It is also appropriate for legacy applications that remain business-critical but are unlikely to receive significant feature development in the near future.

On the other hand, applications undergoing major redevelopment may benefit more from cloud-native architectures that fully exploit managed databases, Kubernetes, serverless computing, or platform services.

The right strategy depends on the application's lifecycle, business priorities, technical constraints, and available engineering resources.

Lift and shift vs. migration alternatives

Not every migration strategy follows the same approach. Choosing between rehosting and other migration models depends on how much change an application requires and the long-term objectives of the organization.

PaaS migration

A Platform as a Service (PaaS) migration adapts applications to use managed cloud services such as databases, application runtimes, or container platforms.

Although this requires more engineering effort than lift and shift, it can reduce operational overhead and improve scalability over the long term.

SaaS migration

A Software as a Service (SaaS) migration replaces self-managed software with a cloud-hosted application operated by a software provider.

Rather than migrating the application itself, organizations migrate their users, data, and business processes to the SaaS platform. This approach is common for email, collaboration tools, customer relationship management, and productivity applications.

Lift and shift best practices

Successful lift and shift projects focus on preparation as much as execution.

Consider the following best practices:

• Inventory existing workloads before planning migration timelines.
• Prioritize low-risk applications to validate migration procedures early.
• Automate deployments wherever possible to improve consistency.
• Implement monitoring immediately after migration to detect issues quickly.
• Review security configurations instead of assuming existing settings remain appropriate in the cloud.
• Optimize infrastructure after migration, including compute sizing, storage classes, and networking.
• Treat migration as the beginning of modernization, not its endpoint.

Organizations that view lift and shift as the first phase of a broader cloud strategy are often better positioned to improve performance, resilience, and operational efficiency over time.

Migrate to Scaleway

A successful lift and shift strategy depends not only on careful planning but also on choosing cloud infrastructure that supports reliable migration and future growth.

At Scaleway, we provide a range of compute, networking, storage, and managed services designed to simplify infrastructure migration while giving organizations the flexibility to modernize at their own pace. Our European cloud infrastructure enables businesses to migrate existing workloads without immediately redesigning their applications, while retaining the option to adopt managed databases, Kubernetes, object storage, and other cloud-native services over time.

We also operate infrastructure across multiple European regions and availability zones, helping organizations design resilient architectures that align with their operational and regulatory requirements. Our platform supports open standards and widely adopted technologies, making it easier to migrate existing virtualized workloads while avoiding unnecessary vendor lock-in.

Whether your objective is reducing data center costs, improving resilience, or establishing a foundation for cloud-native transformation, lift and shift can provide a practical first step and Scaleway can support every stage of that journey.