AWS Cloud Migration Services
In an age of advanced technology, cut-throat competition, and quick success, companies are looking at solutions that will be an omnipotent force in maintaining their existence.
And in that sense, technologies such as the ‘cloud’ do just the things we want and which we cannot describe verbally. How?
This unique technology can serve multiple business goals with a suite of advantages and services.
Your business may be driven by the need for:
- Increased productivity
- A consolidated and reliant data center
- The flexibility to unify work elements and business operations after a merger or acquisition
- Enhancing infrastructure capacity
- Cutting down on operational costs and hardware
- Increasing existing business operations TAT and much more..
But while there are many providers out there, how do you decide which one to approach? And how will you know which ones move and operate the way you want them to?
World tech giants are ever-ready with their fine-tuned cloud solutions to meet whatever your need, your business size and the reach of operations.
One such active service is Amazon Web Services, fondly known as AWS!
Source: AWS
Migrating to an AWS Cloud, with more than 90 services including computing, data analytics, storage, databases, continuous integration, and artificial intelligence, has written many businesses’ success stories.
But before understanding the AWS Cloud Migration, let’s understand how companies using the cloud are driven to cloud adoption.
AWS Cloud Migration Process
In an emerging trend, large enterprises are choosing cloud migration as a business transformation drive. The common migration pattern encompasses five phases:
Phase 1: Creating the Migration Blueprint Along with the Business Framework
In this phase, users need to outline clear-cut business objectives and accordingly analyze the types of benefits that they will receive. This begins with creating some starter experience and designing a project for migration. The process also entails taking into account existing infrastructure and applications with their limitations.
Phase 2: Constructing a Migration Plan Upon Understanding of Interrelation Between Apps
Users need to understand how their IT framework works and how their apps are interconnected and decide a migration strategy accordingly to meet each business case. Considering those mentioned above and building a migration plan accordingly puts users in a better position throughout the migration process.
Phase 3 & 4: Application-wise Designing, Migration and Validating Application
While it is important to understand your entire IT portfolio, it is important to focus on individual applications. Users need to design, migrate and validate each application. AWS designs migrate and validate each application according to AWS’s six common application strategies. Once users are sure of migrating a few applications critical to business and have a compact migration plan, they can kickstart the migration process and scale their cloud operations.
Phase 5: Cloud Operations
Once the applications have been migrated to the cloud, users can conduct regular business operations on a new foundation and incorporate innovation into the operating model. Users get to work with an operating model that is constantly evolving as they scale business operations on the cloud.
AWS Cloud Migration Tools and Services
Every technology’s successful implementation and incorporation depends on the kind of tools used and AWS has a suite of proven tools that are tailored to get the migration process done just right!
Discovery and Migration Process Tracking
- AWS Migration Hub – The AWS Migration Hub provides users with a centralized dashboard to track the application migration process. It also allows users to choose the best fitting tools based on their migration needs and lets them read into the status of app portfolio migration using key metrics. Users also have the advantage of knowing individual app progress no matter which tool is being used.
- AWS Application Discovery Service – This specialized service helps users plan migration projects based on information gathered from on-premise data centers. AWS Application Discovery Service presents users with configuration, behavior, and usage from servers to better understand workloads.
Server and Database Migration
- AWS Server Migration Service – Also known as AWS SMS, this service eases and speeds the migration process by migrating thousands of on-premise workloads to AWS. It allows users to automate, schedule, and track incremental replications of live server volumes.
- AWS Database Migration Service – With this service users can migrate data to and from most widely used commercial and open-source databases. The source database continues to be fully operational during the migration process and minimizes downtimes.
- VMWare Cloud on AWS – VMWare cloud on AWS helps customers run VMWare workloads on the AWS Cloud. VMware virtualization and management software will seamlessly deploy and manage VMWare workloads across all their on-premises and AWS environments.
Data Migration
- Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration – This service speeds up internet transfers to Amazon S3. Users can maximize their available bandwidth irrespective of distance or varying internet weather.
- AWS Snowball – This is a petabyte-scale data transport solution that employs secure appliances to transfer large volumes of data to and from AWS.
- AWS Snowmobile – This service is used to transfer extremely large volumes of data to AWS up to 100PB including video libraries, image repositories and even a complete data center migration.
- AWS Direct Connect – This service allows users to establish a direct network connection between a corporate network and an AWS direct connect location. With the support of standard 802.1q VLANs, the connection can be divided into multiple virtual interfaces. It allows users to use the same connection to access public and private resources while maintaining a partition between both environments.
- Amazon Kinesis Firehose – It is a fully managed service that enables an easy process of loading streamed data into AWS. It captures and automatically loads streaming data into Amazon S3 and Amazon Redshift provisioning near real-time analytics with existing business intelligence tools and dashboards.
Major Strategies for AWS Migration
To set up an ideal AWS Cloud platform and facilitate your business the required transformation without disrupting the current workflow, there are two major strategies one can implement for AWS migration.
1) Forklift Migration Strategy
Forklift migration strategy follows ‘pick up the existing system and drop-in into AWS’ approach rather than moving parts of the system over time. This strategy is ideal for stateless applications, self-contained applications, or tightly coupled applications.
Pros
- This approach helps you to migrate an existing application into the Cloud with minimal code changes.
- It requires minimal planning and low effort.
- This approach offers you the feasibility to focus on your core and primary resources.
Cons
- May not leverage the elasticity and scalability of the cloud to the fullest.
2) Hybrid Migration Strategy
Hybrid migration strategy follows the approach of moving parts of a system to the cloud, rather than moving the whole system. This strategy is suitable for large systems with multifarious applications.
Pros:
- This approach curtails the risk of unprecedented errors after migration.
- In this strategy, you can integrate Cloud-based applications with Cloud-incompatible applications.
- Parts of the application can be moved and optimized one at a time.
Cons:
- This strategy is a time taking approach
Challenges Encountered in AWS Migration
Successful migration to an AWS Cloud brings you many notable benefits. However, the migration process may anchor you with various challenges. These challenges may incur additional costs and impede the workflow. Therefore, it is quite inevitable to do a detailed analysis of the business needs and foresee the challenges beforehand.
Some of the key challenges faced by companies while implementing AWS migration:
1) Identifying key business goals: Evaluating the key functionalities and processes to be focused on during the migration process is the enterprise’s key challenge. The IT firms are compelled to scrutinize the cloud application constantly to ensure their effectiveness and ROI.
2) Understanding new technology: The enterprises’ adaptability directly influences the successful migration to the AWS platform. The organizations should thoroughly understand the technical aspects of AWS cloud and demonstrate the same to the concerned team.
3) Data safety and security: The fear of losing confidential data and security breaches is the prime impetus to compel the companies to keep their data on local servers.
4) Recognizing the overall cost: Many IT firms fail to do accurate cost estimations. So, it is difficult to analyze whether the migration was benefiting the company from an economic perspective. Moreover, the cloud platforms are dynamic, and costs can fluctuate rapidly as you make changes.
Apart from the challenges mentioned above in AWS migration, some factors significantly influence the successful AWS migration.
Factors Impacting a Successful Migration:
- Complexity level of the applications to be migrated
- Compatibility of the applications
- Capability of the enterprise – to how much extend they can put their efforts into migration
AWS Cloud migration and management requires intelligent planning and sound expertise. Hence, it is imperative to take help from AWS migration experts and benefit from fully managed AWS hosting.
Benefits of AWS Cloud Migration
- Improved Business Workflows
- Enhanced Security
- Effective Cost Optimization
- Scalability
- Flexibility
- Access to Innovation
- Business Continuity
AWS vs Azure vs GCP – A Breakdown of Cloud Migration Services
Veritis – A Reliable Cloud Migration Consulting Partner
Veritis is composed of AWS experts who provide you the fully managed AWS hosting for your growing business needs. Our subject matter experts will provide support 24/7 by monitoring your infrastructure, analyzing problems and debugging the issues quickly.
Moreover, Veritis will provide complete infrastructure management consulting services including full monitoring, problem resolution and daily maintenance. Time is too precious, get in touch right away.
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