AWS Migration Guide
This AWS Migration article would walk you through all the necessary pointers that you need to consider before you plan to migrate to Cloud.
Irrespective
of the business, organizations always experience competition. Hence staying
updated with the market needs, becomes a must, and ‘time’ becomes an integral
constituent. What if there was a way business could focus on their business
goals and outsource their maintenance and monitoring tasks somewhere else.
Would that help save time & meet the market needs with more efficiency?
Migrating to cloud lets you do exactly the same. This AWS Migration article
would walk you through all the necessary pointers that you need to consider
before you plan to migrate to Cloud.
What
is Migration?
Migrating
your project means moving your data from the on-premise data center to cloud.
FYI we are not referring to clouds in the sky. In this case, the cloud is the
virtualization used over a data center to make the functionalities more
flexible. Many companies like GoDaddy, Expedia etc., have recently moved their
business to cloud. Having defined Migration, let me tell you where, how, and
who is going to help you migrate your data. The implementation is provided by
Amazon Web Services (AWS). So, let’s find out what AWS is? Amazon Web Services
(AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com which provides on-demand cloud services.
AWS made a debut in 2006 with a few services. Then, in 2012 launched the AWS
Marketplace that accommodated a vast range of services provided by AWS. Again,
Migration is a big task and AWS facilitates Migration in phases. So, let me
walk you through the different phases of Data Migration.
Why
are Companies Moving to AWS?
Need
for Migration: Business is no easy task when it comes to handling situations
like security, scaling up or down, etc. Let’s look at a few scenarios
where AWS Migration could be a better resort.
·
Your project has started receiving a high volume of
traffic overnight
·
Your clients want fast application implementation and
deployment
·
It’s becoming expensive to manage the growing database
needs
·
You are cautious about the mishap of data center going
down
If you Migrate to Cloud then the problems mentioned above
will get handled automatically. Let’s move further and understand it on a
larger level. Here
are a few reasons companies choose to undertake the effort to move applications
and workloads to the Amazon cloud. Alongside the benefits, you should also
consider key challenges of migrating to AWS.
Reduce capital expenditure (CapEx): IT infrastructure
represents a large capital expenditure, in terms of the cost of data center
facilities, servers, software licenses, network and storage equipment. Moving
to AWS reduces CapEx for green field applications, and allows organizations to
reallocate existing on-premise resources to the applications that need them
most.
Pay-as-you-go: Amazon pioneered elastic on-demand billing
for infrastructure. Organizations only pay for actual resources used, such as
CPU, memory, and storage capacity. Organizations can scale up at will,
eliminating the need to purchase more infrastructure to meet peaks in demand,
and can also scale down as soon as resources are not needed, eliminating wasted
unutilized resources.
Improved disaster recovery and high availability: AWS
makes it much easier to backup critical systems to a remote physical location,
and restore at will, without the cost and complexity of setting up backup
infrastructure. Organizations can leverage AWS regions and availability zones
to replicate workloads across multiple data centers and multiple geographical
regions.
Compliance: For organizations operating in regulated
industries, AWS is certified for a large number of security compliance
standards, including PCI-DSS, HIPAA, FedRAMP, GDPR, FIPS 140-2, and NIST
800-171. It provides comprehensive security features, including encryption, key
management and access and identity management (IAM).
Strategies for Migrating Applications to AWS
Each application your organization manages might have a
different migration strategy.
Re-host (Lift and Shift): Move applications to the cloud
as is. This can be useful for large, complex enterprise or legacy applications.
Amazon provides tools like VM Import/Export and Database Migration Service
(DMS) to enable automated lift and shift migration. Lift and shift is the
easiest migration method, but its downside is that on-premise applications are
not well suited to leveraging the benefits of the cloud, such as elasticity and
high availability.
Replatform: This strategy involves making changes to an
application to allow it to benefit from cloud features, but without completely
changing its architecture. For example, an organization can move a
Kubernetes-based application to a managed service such as Amazon Elastic
Kubernetes Service.
Refactor: Refactoring is the most complex migration
strategy, but can also provide the greatest benefits. Refactoring involves
rethinking an application and rebuilding it using a cloud native architecture.
This usually involves breaking the application into small, independent
components (microservices), with built-in fault tolerance and elastic
scalability.
Re-purchase: This involves switching from the original
on-premise system to a cloud-based service that can fulfill the same function.
For example, switching from an on-premise database to a database hosted by the
Amazon Relational Database (RDS) service.
Retire: A valid migration strategy is simply to get rid
of applications that are no longer needed. In most organizations, legacy
systems exist that are not really in use and can be decommissioned. This
creates cost saving for the business and avoids the expense of unnecessary
migration.
Retain: In many cases, organizations will choose to keep
applications and workloads on-premises, for performance, compliance or security
reasons, or simply because the benefit of migration does not outweigh the cost.
These applications can always be migrated at a later stage.
AWS Cloud Migration Tools
Here are a few tools provided by Amazon at no cost, which
can help you manage and automate your migration.
AWS Application Discovery Service (ADS): AWS Application
Discovery Service lets you plan migration projects with a comprehensive
understanding of the local data center. This service collects data about local
servers, such as configuration, usage, and performance, and provides an
accurate overview of their current settings before migration begins. You can pass
data about your on-premise deployment to AWS Migration Hub, or use it to
calculate your current total cost of ownership, and compare it with expected
costs in the cloud. AWS Application Discovery Service is provided free, but you
are charged for AWS resources used to store or manage the data, including
Amazon S3, Athena, and Kinesis.
AWS Server Migration Service (SMS): AWS Server Migration
Service is another free service designed to automate, plan, and monitor
incremental replication of server volumes to Amazon resources. SMS is an
agentless service, which copies server volumes to the cloud and launches Amazon
Machine Images (AMIs) as needed. You can create a replication schedule, and
track replications progress on a central dashboard. SMS speeds up the migration
process by making changes to on-premise servers step-by-step. Because each
change is small and replication is performed gradually, this greatly reduces
the bandwidth and server downtime required for migration. When using SMS, you
only pay for the EBS snapshots created when you replicate each server volume.
You can delete these snapshots when they are no longer needed to minimize
costs.
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS): AWS Database
Migration Service lets you migrate data between popular commercial and open
source databases. DMS can perform homogenous migration (with the same database
and operating system on source and target systems) and heterogeneous migration
(moving data between different platforms). DMS is an agentless service, with no
drivers or applications to install. From the moment the migration begins, it
continually replicates changes to the original database, so there is virtually
no downtime. DMS is designed to be hands free—it has self-monitoring and self-healing
capabilities, so if the network connection is lost, migration automatically
resumes once it comes back online. As with other Amazon migration tools, the
DMS service itself is offered at no cost, but you pay for the target Amazon
database instances, and for data transfer costs, as applicable for the specific
database service.
Phases of AWS Migration
Data Migration seems an easy process because, in layman’s
term, it means moving your data from one location to the other. However, it is
more complex as the process involves different phases. Let me now talk about
the various phases of Migration:
Phase 1: Discovery — Apps which can be moved to Cloud?
There are times you need not require to move your entire
business to the cloud. This is where segregation is important. You need to
identify the applications which can be Migrated and which cannot. Now, let’s go
to Phase 2 i.e. choosing the method for AWS Migration.
Phase 2: Assessment — Choosing Your Migration Method
Depending on the data, AWS provides different ways to
Migrate your application e.g. AWS Snowball, AWS Snowmobile, AWS Direct Connect,
etc. Once you have chosen an appropriate way to move your data, also look for
the resources you will need for it. Let’s now explore the different ways of
storing data on AWS Cloud in Phase 3.
Phase 3: Proof of Concept (POC) for AWS Storage
Once you know how and what you are migrating, next, you
have to figure out how and where you will store it. The entire motive of moving
to AWS is to minimize expenses. In this phase, you’ll test your workload and
understand about AWS Storage Service, their benefits, limitations, and the
necessary security controls.
Phase 4: Application Migration to AWS
Now that you have all the pre-requisites like the
blueprint, Migration tools, list of assignments, backups and its
synchronization with your on-premises data repositories. You can finally
migrate your project to AWS Cloud. Once you have Migrated your project to
cloud, reliability, and durability are the added benefits you get. Let’s see
the changes AWS brings to your architecture in Phase 5.
Phase 5: Enterprise Cloud Operations
At this point, you’ve already migrated to AWS, and AWS
will bring updates that you’ll need to incorporate in your existing
architecture. Hence, you must ensure that you have 24 X 7 support team keeping
track of system maintenance and upgrades after the Migration.
AWS
Migration Checklist
We’ve
covered the key considerations before migrating to AWS. Once you’ve selected
the best candidates for migration, here is a checklist you can use to
effectively migrate your applications.
Prepare
Your Staff
Training: Give staff a
formal training program and online resources they can use to learn about the
cloud.
Sandboxes: Create a
testing environment in which technical staff can “play” with the Amazon
environment to get hands on experience.
Knowledge sharing: Identify
employees who are knowledgeable about the cloud and encourage them to share
their knowledge and become evangelists of your migration effort.
Prepare
Security
Policies: Carefully plan
your AWS security policy. Use Amazon Access and Identity Management (IAM) to
define which users or third party employees can access cloud applications, and
define access permissions for integrated systems.
Data security: Ensure all
sensitive data is encrypted both at rest and in transit, whether in the cloud
or on-premises. Map out sensitive data flows and ensure you configure the
appropriate security measures—remember that securing data is the organization’s
responsibility, not Amazon’s.
Use CASB: A Cloud Access
Security Broker (CASB) helps you establish an audit trail of cloud activity for
compliance and security, and includes cloud-based firewalls for controlling
network traffic.
Set up monitoring: There
are several AWS
monitoring tools you
can use to gain visibility over your cloud applications. Continuously
monitoring cloud resources, and setting up automated responses to common
errors, is key to a healthy deployment.
Migrate
Databases
Plan data
transfer: Cloud
migrations involve transferring large quantities of data. Consider how long the
data transfer will take, and whether to use Amazon Direct Connect (dedicated
link) or Snowball (managed storage appliance) to speed it up.
Refactoring: If you are
moving to a different database, or even to the same database on a managed
service like RDS, consider what needs to change both at the data level and
application level to support the change. Carefully test mission critical
applications before switching over.
Integrations: Consider if
your database integrates with on-premise systems. After migration, it is
possible to keep these integrations, and deal with possible latency issues, or
switch to using cloud services instead. This must be planned carefully in
advance.
Migrate
Unstructured Data
Data consistency: Amazon S3 uses
an eventual consistency model, meaning that when you add new objects they can
be read, but cannot immediately be updated or deleted. Take this into account
in the first stages of migration.
Storage tier
organizing:
Amazon S3 offers a regular “warm” storage tier, and two more tiers for cold
storage and archival storage. Allocate data to the most appropriate storage
tier to conserve costs, meet compliance requirements and ensure timely access.
S3 security: Use Original
Access Identity (OAI) or access control lists (ACL) to specify who can access
S3 buckets.
Use CloudFront CDN: You can
provide faster access to static assets on Amazon S3 using the Cloudfront
content delivery network (CDN), which has points of presence (PoP) near to your
application’s users.
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