10 AWS migration best practices and tips
March 22, 2024
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the most popular platform on the cloud market with a wide selection of cloud services, robust security and encryption features, and advanced flexibility and scalability.
Still, AWS migration remains a complicated and costly process requiring deep AWS cloud expertise. As a certified AWS partner, Itransition can help define migration best practices for a seamless transfer to the cloud.
AWS in numbers
Worldwide market share of leading cloud infrastructure service providers in Q1 2023
Scheme title: AWS dominates the global cloud market
Data source: statista.com — Amazon Maintains Lead in the Cloud Market, 2023
32%
AWS global market share
- Statista
20%
year-on-year AWS segment growth
- Statista
1.45 mn
businesses use AWS
- Intricately
Top 10 AWS migration best practices
The following step-by-step guide will help you ensure the success of your AWS migration project.
1 Conducting workflow mapping
The AWS migration and subsequent business transformation are more effective when DevOps engineers understand exactly which workflows are affected by the change. To gain this understanding, they should run workflow mapping to create a diagram illustrating all processes and connections between them.
Workflow mapping allows engineers to identify and determine processes that can be improved with AWS and specify the steps for improvements. It also enables them to better understand business cases’ requirements and choose the right AWS migration tools.
2 Identifying key roles within an AWS-based operating model
For security purposes, it is critical to clearly define the roles of users that will operate within an AWS environment. Besides that, DevOps engineers should understand how many accounts will use AWS and what access and privileges they should have.
Based on this information, the Itransition team can smoothly implement security practices such as role-based access control (RBAC). By dividing the level of access based on predefined user roles, enterprises can significantly reduce the risk of data loss later on.
3 Calculating the overall migration costs as early as possible
The need to cut on-premise infrastructure management costs is one of the main reasons enterprises initiate AWS migration. However, calculating the total cost of application migration is not an easy task and is riddled with nuances.
The thing is that AWS migration typically implies more than just the rolling cost of ownership, including licensing and commercial software. It also involves additional costs related to staff training, system maintenance, configuration, and other aspects that are not so easy to calculate.
We would recommend doing it step-by-step using the following algorithm and the AWS Pricing Calculator:
- Calculating the approximate cost of a future cloud infrastructure
- Calculating the cost of AWS migration
- Calculating the cost of no longer needed on-premise resources
- Calculating operational expenses
- Calculating the cost of the new administration and management tools
4 Executing the right AWS migration strategy
Typically, enterprises move to AWS using one of seven time-proven AWS cloud migration strategies, often referred to as the 7R's; each of them differs in its complexity, price, skills, and effort required. Depending on their needs, decision-makers can choose one of these strategies or develop their own to combine several AWS migration strategies simultaneously.
5 Implementing automation
Enterprises don’t need to migrate large amounts of information to AWS manually, as there is a wide range of tools available for automating cloud workflows. For example, AWS migration specialists can implement tools such as AWS Auto Scaling and AWS Step Functions. Additionally, if an enterprise has an extensive cloud environment, engineers can use AWS CloudFormation to deploy corporate infrastructure as code (IaC).
6 Engaging third-party AWS experts for migration execution
Enterprises do not have to burden in-house IT teams with AWS migration. Instead, they can hire experts and delegate them the transformation or have them join at certain stages of a migration journey. This might be especially relevant if an in-house team does not have enough expertise to conduct the migration or it is too busy with day-to-day tasks.
7 Enabling monitoring & alerts
After the migration process is finished, enterprises should continuously monitor the health of their cloud infrastructures to avoid errors and disruptions. This process can be streamlined with specialized tools that can analyze the systems’ condition and send alerts in case something doesn’t work correctly. Enterprises should also monitor the cost of used AWS resources and review the budget accordingly.
8 Evaluating migration results
After the data and system transfer, decision-makers and stakeholders should ensure that the migration is successful and that an enterprise has achieved its goals. Here, it is critical to analyze the metrics and KPIs determined in the pre-migration stage.
9 Establishing a migration factory
Large-scale migration projects should focus on an automation-first approach; otherwise, they can become too expensive and time-consuming. An enterprise can build a migration factory to achieve the highest degree of automation.
A migration factory includes technologies, processes, and people that operate together to help enterprises migrate large workloads to the cloud. The operation of the migration factory is based on repeatable patterns and rules that help avoid manual work, thus speeding up the transformation and reducing downtime.
10 Investing in QA & testing
To ensure the success of a large-scale migration project, it is critical to validate all data and applications moved to the AWS cloud. Ideally, an enterprise should develop a comprehensive testing strategy before the project starts and ensure that a migration factory operates in line with it.
Leverage the power of Amazon Web Services
Our AWS migration services
Since 2008, Itransition has been helping enterprises across industries leverage the advantages of the AWS cloud platform, serving as a cloud migration partner.
AWS consulting
We can help an enterprise assess its readiness for AWS, choose the right migration tools, and create a practical and cost-effective migration plan.
- Legacy infrastructure assessment
- Migration strategy development
- TCO calculation
- Expert guidance throughout the migration
AWS migration delivery
We can execute the migration, validate its results, as well as maintain and support the new AWS-based infrastructure.
- Implementing an AWS migration strategy
- Providing QA and testing
- Building a target architecture
- Providing managed services and IT support
Client spotlight
As a certified AWS partner, we have completed hundreds of AWS migration, development, and optimization projects. Here are examples of our work.
3 days to 1 hour
reduction in release testing
Industrial risk management platform
Itransition set up a dedicated development center to help the client automate software testing and deployment with AWS.
Speech recognition
and smartpen functionality
A telemedicine-enabled EHR
We helped a medical software provider build a telemedicine-ready EHR that can be deployed either on-premise or in the AWS cloud.
-50%
in monthly infrastructure costs
A BI platform for the retail industry
Itransition delivered a BI platform equipped with AI and computer vision that was built on a serverless architecture and hosted on AWS.
-55%
in the computing costs
A cloud-based software for collections management
We delivered a cloud-based museum collection management solution that is used by nearly 5,000 museums across the globe.
3 days to 1 hour
reduction in release testing
Industrial risk management platform
Itransition set up a dedicated development center to help the client automate software testing and deployment with AWS.
Speech recognition
and smartpen functionality
A telemedicine-enabled EHR
We helped a medical software provider build a telemedicine-ready EHR that can be deployed either on-premise or in the AWS cloud.
-50%
in monthly infrastructure costs
A BI platform for the retail industry
Itransition delivered a BI platform equipped with AI and computer vision that was built on a serverless architecture and hosted on AWS.
-55%
in the computing costs
A cloud-based software for collections management
We delivered a cloud-based museum collection management solution that is used by nearly 5,000 museums across the globe.
3 days to 1 hour
reduction in release testing
Industrial risk management platform
Itransition set up a dedicated development center to help the client automate software testing and deployment with AWS.
Speech recognition
and smartpen functionality
A telemedicine-enabled EHR
We helped a medical software provider build a telemedicine-ready EHR that can be deployed either on-premise or in the AWS cloud.
-50%
in monthly infrastructure costs
A BI platform for the retail industry
Itransition delivered a BI platform equipped with AI and computer vision that was built on a serverless architecture and hosted on AWS.
-55%
in the computing costs
A cloud-based software for collections management
We delivered a cloud-based museum collection management solution that is used by nearly 5,000 museums across the globe.
Our AWS migration framework
1
Project assessment
At this preparatory step, our team runs a technical analysis, assesses the migration readiness, and calculates the cost of AWS migration.
2
Infrastructure configuration
As the migration begins, DevOps engineers set up an AWS-based infrastructure and implement the necessary configuration management tools.
3
System & data migration
We ensure the transition to cloud computing, migrate licensed products, and transfer information from legacy systems to Amazon databases.
4
System modernization
We adapt the application architecture to maximize profits, performance, and security gains for the customer on AWS over their previous hosting.
5
Harnessing the AWS Cloud
At this stage, the team builds dashboards to help users interact with the cloud, enforce security measures, and integrate additional AWS services.
6
Deployment optimization
Once the migration is complete, DevOps engineers optimize the new cloud infrastructure by implementing monitoring tools, tracking system usage metrics, collecting analytics, and improving performance.
AWS migration benefits
Advanced scalability & flexibility
With AWS, enterprises can scale their IT infrastructures vertically and horizontally, smoothly meeting changing business requirements.
Accelerated innovation speed
Using AWS, enterprises can quickly implement new technologies; for example, they can use AWS tools such as Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Rekognition to adopt machine learning.
Improved DevOps efficiency
AWS provides plenty of tools and infrastructure resources, such as AWS CodePipeline and AWS CodeBuild, to help enterprises apply and maintain the DevOps methodology.
Enhanced data security
AWS provides powerful security tools, such as AWS Security Hub and AWS Shield, for automating security checks and enhancing DDOS protection.
AWS migration challenges
Enterprises can face several significant barriers while migrating to AWS. Learn how to overcome them:
Challenge
Solution
Ensuring high user adoption
Business transformation encompassing AWS migration can be stressful for enterprises and their employees, as they can make more mistakes and be generally less productive before getting used to the new technology.
Besides continuous training sessions, an enterprise should run employee surveys throughout an adoption period and gather their feedback to improve an existing change management strategy.
Keeping AWS migration costs low
As more and more workloads are migrated to the AWS cloud, an enterprise can face an increase in its service spending, leading to budget overruns and reduced ROI of AWS migration.
Enterprises should consider a batch approach to AWS adoption to move their infrastructures to the cloud gradually and thus make costs more manageable. Additionally, they should run continuous cloud cost optimization that would include billing and pricing data review.
Maintaining migration security
The number of cyber threats is growing every day, which inevitably increases security risks for any data migration projects, and AWS-related ones are no exception.
Decision-makers can consider building microservices based on the AWS platform; by breaking down software components into smaller pieces, DevOps engineers can isolate and protect sensitive and confidential data, thus improving cloud security.
Avoiding vendor lock-in
Being strongly tied to a single cloud provider like AWS, an enterprise can fail to switch to another cloud platform later on due to increased migration complexity and costs.
While it can be challenging regarding security and cost management, enterprises can prioritize multi-cloud (or hybrid cloud) strategies to be able to use multiple solutions from various service providers.
3 pillars of AWS migration
Strategy
Timeline
Scope
The pillars of AWS migration
Scope: what are we going to migrate?
When initiating an AWS migration project, decision-makers do not always clearly understand the full scale of existing applications and data that will be migrated. For example, an enterprise can find some shadow IT resources, not recorded in a configuration management database (CMDB), when the migration journey has already begun.
If decision-makers fail to estimate the scope in advance, this can later lead to unnecessary money and time expenses for an enterprise. To avoid such issues, companies can use specialized software, such as asset discovery tools, to identify corporate assets and highlight dependencies between them.
Strategy: why do we want to migrate?
Since enterprises have limited resources (both organizational and financial), they should prioritize only the most crucial business goals at a time. Decision-makers identify the key drivers prompting an enterprise to run AWS migration, including:
- The aim to upgrade legacy infrastructure, migrate on-premise data centers, or deploy newer software stacks
- The need to implement new CI/CD pipelines
- The demand for the AWS Cloud as a means for accelerating innovation and reducing technical debt
Next, decision-makers should identify their critical goals with superior business value. Based on this information, they can draw up a more realistic and cost-effective migration plan.
Timeline: when should we migrate?
Decision-makers should set clear time frames for their projects to achieve tangible business results from AWS migration and avoid spending too much time and money throughout this process.
Depending on their particular business case, companies should ensure they are not taking on more than they can achieve in the allocated time frame. Then, decision-makers can choose one of the relevant AWS migration strategies and thus ensure that DevOps engineers meet the deadline. Most large migrations are time-sensitive, so the process should have fixed timelines, budgets, and set outcomes with little room for overrun.
Migrate to AWS with a trustworthy partner
Despite all the advantages enterprises can gain from AWS, migrating apps and data to this cloud platform can be challenging. As a rule, organizations struggle with calculating the overall cost of migration, assessing compatibility between on-premise infrastructure and the cloud, and ensuring data security throughout the migration. Follow the AWS migration best practices and contact trustworthy AWS service providers for help. Itransition’s experts are always ready to facilitate your migration journey and ensure its successful delivery.
Let us support you in the AWS migration journey
FAQ
Why is AWS cloud migration necessary?
Reduced IT management costs, increased technology agility, and improved business performance are key drivers that prompt enterprises to initiate AWS cloud adoption and migration.
What are some tools for AWS migration, and which one is the best?
AWS Migration Evaluator, AWS Application Discovery Service, and AWS Migration Hub are just some of the dozens of tools that empower successful migrations. However, it is difficult to identify one ideal tool, since each is aimed at specific use cases and migration tasks.
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