Lift and shift is a migration strategy that involves moving a software application from one environment to another without redesigning the application. Rehosting is a lift and shift approach in which an application and its data are copied from physical or virtual servers to an IaaS solution. The application does not need to be changed and the cloud provider hosts the infrastructure. This is a quick, low-risk, and easy way to migrate an application to the cloud.
Rehosting can be the first step in a cloud migration for an application. Once the legacy application is running in the cloud, it may be refactored later in order to optimize it for its new environment. The fact that it is already hosted in the cloud may make that process easier.