AWS Fundamentals: Migrating to the Cloud

Hi, so this is part 3 in AWS Fundamentals part. This time we will be focusing on migrating to the AWS Cloud, all the information has been learned from this course, https://www.coursera.org/learn/aws-fundamentals-cloud-migration/home/welcome and AWS docs.

Q.What is Migration ?

Cloud migration is the process of moving data, applications, or other business elements to a cloud computing environment. Whether it is a server you want to retire, some data you want to move, or an entire networked environment that needs a new home, there are various types of cloud migrations an enterprise can perform.

For many companies, the number one reason they choose to move to the cloud, is the agility and speed that they can move with. The migration process involves five phases.

1.Phase one, migration preparation and business planning ;

It starts with some foundational experience and developing a preliminary business case for migration, which requires taking objectives into account, along with the age and architecture of the existing applications and their constraints.

2.Phase two, portfolio discovery and planning :

The goal is to establish where our dependencies are between our applications, and begin thinking about what types of migrations might work best for each. Not every application is likely to fall into the same migration strategy. The AWS application discovery service can assist with this process by gathering information about your environment.

3.Phases three and four, designing, migrating, and validating applications :

With phases three and four, we’re still planning with our designs, but we then migrate and validate. Here the focus starts to shift from the portfolio level to the individual application level, where you’re designing, migrating, and validating each application.

Applications need to be looked at individually. Their needs require assessment, and then they need to be treated in the ways that best fit their use cases. This is not the time to try and force a one size fits all type of mentality.

Partners can help you here as well as AWS server Migration Service, AWS database Migration Service, and Cloud Endure Migration.

4.Phase five, operate:

Phase five is an ongoing phase, taking all of the information and lessons learned from our migration and working towards continual improvement. There are many migration partners available to help you better operate in the cloud and become more proficient in your migrations

Cloud Adoption Framework :

AWS Professional Services created the Cloud Adoption Framework to help organizations design and travel an accelerated path to successful cloud adoption. The guidance and best practices provided by the framework help you build a comprehensive approach to cloud computing across your organization, and throughout your IT lifecycle. The Cloud Adoption Framework covers what we see as six important perspectives to consider when looking at cloud adoption plans.

The business perspectives look at business, people and governance. While the technical perspectives focus on platform, security, and operations.

The business perspective,

1. to help you move from separate strategies for business and IT, to a business model that integrates IT strategy.
2. the people perspective focuses on preparing teams for cloud adoption, by updating staff skill, and organizational processes, to include cloud based competencies.
3. the governance is about the integration of IT governance, and organizational governance. It provides guidance on identifying and implementing best practices for IT governance, and on supporting business processes with technology.

On the technical side,

1. the platform perspective helps you design, implement, and optimize the architecture of AWS technology, based on business goals and objectives, by helping to provide strategic guidance for the design, principles, tools, and policies you use to define AWS infrastructure.
2. the security perspective helps you to structure the selection and implementation of controls.
3. the operations perspective helps you to run, use, operate, and recover IT workloads, to levels that meet the requirements of your business.

Amazon has six approaches that we see as common migration strategies for applications. The six strategies are. Rehost, replatform, repurchase, refactor, retire and retain.

You should gain a thorough understanding of which migration strategy will be best suited for certain portions of you portfolio. It is also important to consider that, while one of these six strategies may be best for migrating certain applications, another strategy might work better for moving different applications in the same portfolio.

1.Rehost :

Rehost commonly referred to as lift and shift, is a direct migration where you’re trying to pick up and move your applications or environments directly into the cloud, while trying to make as few changes as possible. . With re hosting, your goal is often just to try and get to the cloud as quickly as possible, while maintaining the stability functionality and security of your existing system.

2.Replatforming :

Replatforming is about gaining some optimization while migrating. So instead of a lift and shift restriction, we’re looking more at lift, tinker, and shift. Overall, this wouldn’t look too different. You’re still trying to maintain the stability and functionality, but you may also want to find some ways that will immediately make things easier in the long run. Maybe not major changes, but something simple to handle. For example, your database.

3.Repurchase :

In the repurchase strategy, you’re making the decision to move to a different product or licensing model. An example of this strategy could be to use the migration as an opportunity to upgrade to a newer version of a product, or maybe to move from a commercial license to an enterprise license, or vice versa. The important distinction is that you aren’t fundamentally changing the design of the application or system.

4.Refactor :

For the refactor or rearchitect strategy, you’re typically driven by a strong business need to add features, scale, or performance that would be difficult to achieve in the existing environment. Even though this strategy can sometimes be the most expensive when calculating hours spent, it can often yield the best results, since it allows for taking full advantage of the benefits that the cloud offers.

5.Retire :

Retire strategy can be implemented to help clean up and reduce the assets to be migrated. By removing the applications no longer in use, it allows you to direct your attention towards migrating and maintaining the resources that matter.

6.Retain

The final strategy is to retain things as is. This decision can be made for a variety of reasons. Sometimes there are applications that you are just not ready to migrate. Or, in some cases, the business feels more comfortable keeping them on premises.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to migrations, so taking the time upfront to plan will lead to the least headaches and most success.

For further information,

1. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/enterprise-strategy/6-strategies-for-migrating-applications-to-the-cloud/
2. https://aws.amazon.com/cloud-migration/how-to-migrate/