Move from the data center to the cloud — without the fear.

How the course is built

☺ Like you’re 10: First you learn the moving basics that are true no matter which new building you pick. Then you get a guided tour of each of the three big “apartment buildings” in the sky. Then there are tools to help you practice, test yourself, and look things up.

The course has seven parts. Migration Foundations teaches the provider-neutral ideas — they’re true whether you move to AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, so nothing you learn is wasted. Migration Directions widens the map beyond the classic move: cloud-to-cloud, hybrid, multi-cloud, and repatriation. The Cloud Tracks then show how each of the big three actually does a migration: their framework, their tools, and their gotchas. Hands-On Labs is where you stop reading and start deciding: one fictional estate, moved end to end, plus short drills on the three calls that go wrong most often. The last three parts are there to make it stick: Common Preparation gives you flashcards and a printable checklist, Exam Prep maps the material onto the certifications that actually test migration and puts a timed simulator in front of you, and Reference keeps the tools landscape, real case studies, and a searchable glossary within reach.

Meet the Migration Academy

☺ Like you’re 10: To make the big ideas stick, this course is taught by a team of animal friends. Each one is an expert at one moving job — so the moment the elephant shows up, you know it’s time to talk about carrying the heavy boxes of data safely.

Every big idea has a recurring character who is that idea — 🦉 Professor Owl draws the map, 🐼 Master Panda keeps it calm and slow, 🦊 Foxy asks the question you’re thinking, 🐿️ Nutty takes inventory before you pack, 🦫 Benny the Beaver does the actual move and build, 🐘 Ellie the Elephant guards your data, 🦋 Mira the Butterfly transforms old apps into new ones, and 🐢 Timmy the Turtle double-checks everything — while 👺 Gizmo the Gremlin tries to tempt you into shortcuts. Watch for the “Your hosts for this topic” strip and the little 🎬 At the Migration Academy scenes in each lesson.

Meet the full cast and see how it works → The Migration Academy

The one mental model that makes it all click

☺ Like you’re 10: For every single thing you own, you get to choose: keep it, toss it, move it as-is, tweak it a bit, or rebuild it brand-new. You don’t make one choice for everything — you choose per item.

Before any tool or cloud, internalize this: a migration is not one decision — it’s a decision per application. Every app you own gets sorted into one of the 7 R’s — Retire, Retain, Rehost, Relocate, Repurchase, Replatform, or Refactor — sliding along the spectrum above from “change nothing” to “rebuild it cloud-native.” Get that sorting right and the rest of the move is mostly execution.

What’s inside

☺ Like you’re 10: The lessons are stacked like levels in a video game — each one uses what you learned in the level before, so you keep getting stronger.

…plus flashcards to test yourself and a printable migration checklist in the sidebar under Common Preparation — and, when you’re going for a badge, the certifications map and a timed exam simulator under Exam Prep.

Hands-On Labs — move one estate yourself

☺ Like you’re 10: Reading about moving house doesn’t teach you to move house. So here’s a pretend family with a garage full of stuff and a date they have to be out by — and it’s your job to decide what gets thrown away, what gets packed first, and what to do if the van breaks down halfway.

A migration is decided in spreadsheets, architecture calls and runbooks long before anyone touches a console — so that’s what these labs are. You’re handed Brambleside Veterinary Group: sixteen systems, a colo contract that expires on 31 March, two blackout windows, a data-residency rule and a $42,000/month bill to beat. Across five parts you produce the five documents a real move actually runs on — a disposition matrix, a landing-zone design, a wave plan, a cutover runbook with its rollback, and a steady-state cost model — and check each against a fully worked answer key. The three drills are separate, self-contained estates for the calls that go wrong most: picking the R, sizing the data move, and writing a rollback that still works after the point of no return.