AWS Cloud Migration Guide| Transform & Scale Your Business

AWS migration has seen significant growth over the past years. However, many enterprises are yet to discover the full potential of the AWS cloud data environment as the migration journey is riddled with challenges. This AWS cloud migration guide intends to help businesses develop a proper migration plan and ensure accurate execution for a successful, trouble-free migration.

Before you embark upon your cloud migration journey, here are some of the aspects you need to ponder over.

What is AWS Cloud Migration?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a secure cloud service platform offering over 100 cloud computing services. Most of these services are based on the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Many organizations opt for hybrid cloud architecture and combine their existing resources with AWS cloud resources.

AWS migration becomes a frictionless journey with diverse expert-managed technology resources that are available on demand. The various AWS services available include database storage, content delivery, compute power, and several other features to help businesses scale and grow.

AWS cloud platform is leveraged for varying uses, such as:

• Storing loads of data, public or private.
• Managing extensive data for different purposes.
• Extending support to e-commerce websites in heavy loads.
• Managed hosting for the static website and web apps, which use client-side technologies (i.e., CSS, HTML, and JavaScript)

Benefits of AWS Migration

There are many reasons to transport your IT infrastructure into the AWS cloud. AWS brings in a host of computing resources to handle your IT-related projects, allowing you to instead devote your people, time, and money to activities that directly contribute to the bottom line.

By upgrading to cloud infrastructure, you eliminate the limitations presented by physical data centers and enjoy access to data from anywhere and at all times. Big names like Netflix, Facebook, and BBC are among the top AWS customers.

Let’s dive deeper to understand how cloud-centric Amazon Web Services help keep your IT operations and spendings lean and agile.

• Low Cost

As your SMB flourishes, a need arises to invest in hardware and administrative infrastructure to enable the current IT infrastructure to keep up with increased demand.

The AWS cloud platform allows you to run your enterprise applications and to operate systems at no up-front cost. The only expense accrued is from the cloud computing resources when used.

Also, scaling up and down to meet your current loads is a lot easier with cloud assets, which can be provisioned on request, and cloud cost management capabilities allow you to keep your cloud spends in check.

• Flexibility

It should come as no surprise if your current operating system and database are already compatible with AWS. AWS products align with almost all programming frameworks and coding languages. Thus this saves your developers time and resources.

The elastic model of AWS allows you to quickly provision as many resources as you need, whether you’re migrating to the cloud, moving onto a new cloud platform, or preparing for DevOps.

• Security

With rising instances of data breaches worldwide, the need and cost of cybersecurity are more than ever. AWS makes data security a priority through a shared responsibility model. AWS provides you with a globally secure infrastructure while ensuring legal compliance.

However, the responsibility of integrity, confidentiality, and availability lies with the customers. AWS allows you to protect your data through encryption and control your content according to the prescribed best practices and guidelines.

• Disaster Recovery

Do away with the risk of power losses, software failures, data corruption, and human blunders by employing cloud-based disaster recovery techniques. These techniques are simple to apply as most of the procedures can be automated, saving you human efforts and hardware resources.

AWS Migration Strategy

Five different techniques called 5Rs, are available for businesses looking to migrate to the cloud. Find a brief description of each of the AWS cloud migration strategies below:

• Rehost

Rehosting is a simple lift-and-shift strategy wherein your existing servers are deployed on the cloud server using an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) model. Although rehosting in itself is a time-efficient migration technique, it can be made even simpler with automation tools.

Therefore, rehosting is suitable for companies less familiar with cloud environments or complex applications to allow for coding adjustments.

• Replatform

Also known as “lift, tinker, and shift,” refactoring involves making necessary cloud optimizations to your systems to achieve a tangible benefit. However, the core architecture of the applications remains unaltered.

For instance, moving to a database-as-a-service platform (like Amazon RDS) or a fully managed platform (like AWS Elastic Beanstalk) can help reduce the time spent managing database instances.

• Rearchitect

Rearchitecting is one step ahead of the re-platform approach wherein significant changes are introduced to the architecture or code of the applications migrating to the cloud. The goal is to enable your current applications to leverage the cloud tools and services to their optimal level. Proper foreplanning is necessary for the successful implementation of this strategy.

• Rebuild

In all the migration strategies mentioned above, the applications move to the cloud with their existing code base. In rebuilding, however, the norm is changed as the existing code base is discarded and the application is built from scratch using cloud features and services.

If your current solutions don’t fulfill your business needs and you are ready to invest a significant amount of time, rebuilding is a suitable migration strategy for your organization.

• Replace

If the challenges characterizing the rebuild approach aren’t agreeable to your business, replacing is a better alternative for you. The replacing strategy doesn’t require redeveloping your system or applications from scratch. The alternative presented here is that you can migrate to a third-party, prebuilt application purchased from the vendor of your choice.

In replacing, you don’t migrate the existing application as a whole, but only the data is transferred to an entirely new system.

AWS Migration Service & Tools

Transitioning to the AWS cloud platform is an iterative journey wherein a business evolves as it adopts new AWS cloud migration tools and services. Here, we have mentioned some of AWS cloud migration services and tools you can benefit from on the cloud.

(1) AWS Migration Hub

With AWS Migration Hub, you get a unified platform to keep in check application migration processes across different AWS frameworks and partner solutions. You get the liberty to select the AWS cloud platform and the right-fit partner migration tools for obtaining visibility into the migration of all applications. With AWS Migration Hub, you also get to track individual applications through key metrics and progress, irrespective of the tools employed in their migration to the cloud

(2) AWS Application Discovery Services

Create a sure-fire plan for your migration projects with AWS Application Discovery Services that systematically collects all information stored on your data centers. This service collects and presents behavior data, usage, and configuration available on your servers. The data is pivotal in helping you get a clear picture of your workloads and migrate effectively.

(3) Cost Management

When migrating to the cloud, many organizations proceed without putting a clear cost management strategy in place. There is often a lack of clear KPIs on estimated cloud spendings and anticipated post-migration cost savings. Without a clear economic model, it isn’t easy to analyze how beneficial migration has been for your business.

Also, scaling applications up and down on the cloud to meet business objects can significantly impact your overall cloud expenditure. Hence, it is important to continually monitor costs so that you can support and resolve major deviations in time before they turn into unpleasant surprises.

(4) Security Considerations

The very act of migrating to the cloud creates a kind of “security vacuum” as the existing security provisions don’t accompany your applications onto the cloud. Hence, it is important to evaluate all your applications for your security and compliance requirements.

This understanding will help you discover AWS services and solutions equivalent to or even better than the on-premises security tools. Ensure that the chosen cloud security measures shield your applications at all phases of the migration project, from development and testing to deployment.

Conclusion

Amazon Web Services offers cloud computing resources to manage IT infrastructure, allowing businesses to focus on their core operations to raise their bottom line. You can’t emphasize enough the benefits of having an innovative and low-cost cloud infrastructure for your business.

The flexibility that comes with AWS cloud not only allows you to access your data at any time remotely but also enables you to promptly scale your cloud resources up and down to meet your changing business needs.