{"id":69077,"date":"2024-01-10T17:32:22","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T16:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/intellias.com\/?post_type=blog&p=69077"},"modified":"2024-06-27T22:16:47","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T20:16:47","slug":"aws-cloud-migration-guide-tips-strategies-and-best-practices","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/intellias.com\/aws-cloud-migration-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"AWS Cloud Migration Guide: Tips, Strategies, and Best Practices"},"content":{"rendered":"
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the biggest and most trusted cloud providers worldwide. Its scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency let companies adapt to change and innovate faster while optimizing resources.<\/p>\n
An IDC study<\/a> found that companies that met the challenges of the digital age with a public cloud platform lowered operating costs by 51% and deployed new features almost 3x faster on average.<\/p>\n But an on-premises to AWS cloud migration also involves navigating complex decisions around architecture, security, budgeting, and more.<\/p>\n This guide will help you understand the nuances of AWS migration, including:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Migrating your on-premise infrastructure to the AWS cloud can drive innovation, reduce costs, improve operational performance, and gain a competitive edge. Using real-world customer examples of AWS cloud platform migration, let\u2019s look at the top four reasons of cloud migration to AWS and why they\u2019re so important to companies today.<\/p>\n Netflix is a well-known AWS customer and a prime example<\/a> of a company benefiting from the cloud\u2019s scalability. Netflix streams petabytes of video daily, with spikes during peak viewing times. And their workloads aren\u2019t just about streaming. They also involve massive data processing for content recommendations using machine learning and huge storage needs for high-definition content.<\/p>\n Using AWS, Netflix can launch thousands of server instances and petabytes of storage within minutes. When they release a new show and anticipate a surge in viewership, AWS’ scalable infrastructure allows them to automatically and quickly scale up. Likewise, they can scale down during off-peak times, ensuring cost efficiency. This elasticity ensures a seamless viewing experience for users while optimizing costs for Netflix.<\/p>\n AWS Professional Services<\/p>\n Loacker, a leading international wafer and chocolate confections company, relies heavily on its IT infrastructure for its 24\/7 production factory. Located in remote Alpine regions, the company faced challenges with onsite system access due to hardware limitations and extreme weather. Since lost production time means lost revenue and potentially reputation, Loacker decided to move to the cloud in 2021.<\/p>\n Since successfully migrating to AWS<\/a> in 2021, the company’s infrastructure has experienced zero downtime. AWS’ Multiple Availability Zones (AZs) ensured that even if one zone faced issues, Loacker’s systems would remain operational. This bolstered reliability meant that Loacker could maintain its production seamlessly, safeguarding its business continuity. They saw a cost-savings on infrastructure of 32% at the same time!<\/p>\n Learn about migration to AWS cloud and DevOps excellence by Intellias that resulted in a product-led business growth<\/p>\n Southwest Airlines transports 130 million passengers annually, and it takes a vast network of integrated applications to support its operations. There’s a pressing need to maintain stringent security protocols to safeguard sensitive data and system operations. The security team needed high visibility into security operations to quickly detect, investigate, and respond to threats.<\/p>\n They adopted<\/a> AWS Security Hub and other AWS security products when they moved to the cloud. These tools provide detailed security insights for all their AWS and third-party accounts. As a result, Southwest can now scan over 600,000 resources across multiple AWS accounts monthly. And an impressive 98% of these resources pass security checks.<\/p>\n One of our previous examples, Netflix, is also the perfect case study for why companies rely on AWS\u2019s global reach. AWS enables Netflix to deliver content efficiently worldwide<\/a>. It leverages Amazon CloudFront, AWS\u2019 content delivery network, to serve its content globally with reduced latency. It also ensures high availability and fault tolerance by distributing its application across three AWS regions globally and replicating databases across these regions. If one region fails, Netflix can redirect users to the nearest available region.<\/p>\n Learn how 2.5 months of AWS cloud migration contributed to the bank\u2019s business continuity and security<\/p>\n Despite the massive benefits of adopting a cloud infrastructure, there are still barriers you might face when looking to adopt the cloud \u2014 both organizationally and from a technology perspective. The good news is that there are ways to combat these challenges. There are many beneficial AWS migration strategies to follow.<\/p>\n Many organizations have invested heavily in legacy systems, including hardware, software, and training. Transitioning to the cloud could mean that these investments become underutilized or obsolete.<\/p>\n Conducting a cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the ROI of shifting to the cloud versus continuing with on-premises infrastructure is essential. A hybrid approach can be adopted in some cases, where specific applications or services remain on-premises while others move to the cloud. This can maximize the value of existing investments.<\/p>\n Migrating to the cloud often requires a significant initial investment in migration tools, consultancy, training, and potentially rewriting applications or systems to be cloud-compatible.<\/p>\n While there are initial expenses, the long-term savings due to the cloud’s scalability, flexibility, and reduced need for on-premises maintenance often outweigh these costs. Organizations should look at cloud adoption as a strategic move that can reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) in the long run.<\/p>\n Convincing all stakeholders, especially those used to traditional IT environments, can be challenging. Some may have concerns about security, loss of control, or simply a resistance to change.<\/p>\n Effective communication will help you here. Demonstrating clear benefits, sharing case studies, and providing training sessions can alleviate concerns. Make sure that all stakeholders understand the strategic importance and potential ROI of cloud adoption. And when all else fails, you can always consider a private cloud.<\/p>\n Legacy applications often have complex interdependencies, making moving them to the cloud without disruptions challenging. There’s also the risk of certain features or integrations not working as intended in a cloud environment.<\/p>\n During your AWS migration planning, you should thoroughly assess the application landscape. Dependency mapping tools can help identify how applications interact. Based on this, you or your migration services partner can devise a phased migration strategy with detailed AWS migration steps that ensures minimal disruption. Some legacy applications might also need refactoring or re-architecting to be cloud-ready.<\/p>\n Downtime during migration can disrupt business operations, leading to financial losses and negative user experiences. But with proper planning, it\u2019s possible to migrate with little to no downtime. Using migration tools, following best practices, and opting for a phased migration can help reduce downtime. It’s also beneficial to schedule migrations during off-peak hours and to communicate expected downtimes to stakeholders well in advance.<\/p>\n Many organizations don\u2019t have in-house cloud expertise, making the migration process daunting and increasing the risk of costly mistakes. Upskilling existing teams through training and certifications is essential.<\/p>\n You can partner with cloud consultancy firms to supplement your efforts, especially in the beginning. Over time, as your team gains experience, your organization becomes more self-reliant in its cloud endeavors.<\/p>\n Aside from the recommendations above, there is a set of overarching best practices that can set you up for success in your journey to the cloud.<\/p>\n With leadership from the top, it will be easier to gain cross-organizational support. Executive stakeholders can also help align cloud initiatives to business requirements.<\/p>\n Prioritize cloud services over traditional computing methods whenever a new IT project is initiated. More than moving infrastructure to the cloud, you\u2019ll also want to reimagine how processes and systems work in a cloud-centric environment.<\/p>\n Cloud adoption is a cultural change as much as it is technical. It requires a mindset shift, where teams collaborate more, value agility, and accept continuous learning. This means defining new operating models, policies, business processes, and economics. It may also mean restructuring teams or redefining job roles \u2014 and will definitely require upskilling and training.<\/p>\n An adoption roadmap is the blueprint for your organization’s cloud journey. It outlines phases, milestones, potential challenges, and the intended final state. But it doesn\u2019t have to include your entire migration journey. Start small and iterate, measure, manage, and update your plan.<\/p>\n A CCoE is a centralized team, often cross-functional, that leads the organization’s cloud efforts. It comprises experts who offer guidance, best practices, and governance<\/a> structures that guide decentralized cloud initiatives. The CCoE can also champion the cloud-first strategy and ensure that cloud initiatives align with business objectives so stakeholders see value from cloud investments.<\/p>\n Establishing and publishing clear guidance and guardrails helps guide the adoption process. These standards can cover everything from security protocols to software selection. Adhering to best practices ensures that cloud deployments are secure, compliant, and optimized for performance.<\/p>\n The cloud offers a platform where organizations can test new ideas without a massive upfront investment. By allowing for experimentation, organizations can innovate faster, learn from failures without huge repercussions, and find the most efficient solutions tailored to their needs.<\/p>\n Migrating to the cloud is a multifaceted process that involves shifting digital assets, services, and applications from on-premises or legacy infrastructure to a cloud-based<\/a> environment. This includes all your IT resources: servers, networking, storage systems, software applications and middleware, data, and beyond.<\/p>\n When migrating to AWS, tools like AWS Migration Hub, AWS Application Discovery Service, and AWS Server Migration Service can help with discovery, tracking, and migration.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Whether migrating data, applications, or infrastructure, following these AWS cloud migration best practices will help ensure a smooth journey:<\/p>\n Build a skilled team<\/strong>: Ensure you have a team experienced in cloud technologies and migration strategies. Consider training, hiring, or partnering with expert consultants on the AWS migration approach.<\/p>\n Conduct assessment and discovery<\/strong>: Before deciding on a migration strategy, thoroughly assess the current application portfolio to understand dependencies, complexities, and business importance.<\/p>\n Prioritize applications<\/strong>: Not all infrastructure, applications, or data workloads are equally critical. Prioritize migrations based on business needs, technical feasibility, and ROI.<\/p>\n Ensure security<\/strong>: Consider data encryption, compliance, identity and access management, and other security best practices to ensure that the application is secure during and after migration.<\/p>\n Performance test<\/strong>: Before and after migration, conduct performance tests to make sure that applications meet or exceed pre-migration performance levels.<\/p>\n Continuously monitor and optimize<\/strong>: Once migrated, continuously monitor applications for performance, security, and cost. Optimize based on these insights.<\/p>\n Communicate, communicate, communicate<\/strong>: Keep stakeholders informed about migration plans, potential downtimes, benefits, and any risks.<\/p>\n Have a rollback strategy<\/strong>: Always have a plan to revert changes in case the migration faces unexpected issues.<\/p>\n Verify data integrity<\/strong>: Especially for data-intensive applications, ensure data integrity during migration. Test and verify that data remains consistent pre and post-migration.<\/p>\n Take a phased approach<\/strong>: Instead of migrating everything simultaneously, consider a phased approach. Migrate one or a set of data or applications at a time. This reduces risks and allows lessons learned from earlier phases to be applied to later ones.<\/p>\n Make your applications cloud-ready<\/strong>: To truly capitalize on the cloud’s potential, applications need to be refactored\/rearchitected to align with cloud-native principles and services. Simply \u201clifting and shifting\u201d an on-premises application to the cloud does not automatically translate to the improved performance, scalability, or reduced costs that cloud platforms offer.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s explore these migration methods a bit further.<\/p>\n During the assessment and application prioritization phase, you\u2019ll want to decide what migration method to use for each application. There are three primary approaches you can take when you migrate an application to AWS:<\/p>\n Rehosting<\/strong>, aka \u201clift and shift,\u201d is the fastest and easiest way to migrate to the cloud. You take your existing on-premises application and move it to the cloud without making any changes. Keeping things as they are removes the need for development work (saves money) and minimizes the risk of disruption during migration.<\/p>\n But while this method is quick, it can also lead to performance issues since the application isn\u2019t optimized for the cloud environment. Additionally, you\u2019ll miss out on many benefits of the cloud, like scalability and flexibility.<\/p>\n Replatforming<\/strong>, aka \u201clift, tinker, and shift,\u201d is a middle-ground migration approach. With this method, you optimize your application to take advantage of some cloud capabilities but don\u2019t completely rewrite it. For example, make minimal code changes to let the application benefit from automation and an elastic database.<\/p>\n Since you keep modifications minimal, replatforming is relatively cost-effective while allowing applications to access some benefits of the cloud. However, you\u2019ll likely only be able to take advantage of common cloud components.<\/p>\n Rearchitecting<\/strong>, or refactoring, involves modifying or extending the application’s architecture to be cloud-native. There are several options, including transitioning applications to run on event-driven, serverless, or microservices architectures. This is the most resource-intensive option but also provides the best returns. If you want to future-proof an application or are digitally transforming your business, this approach is your best option to unlock the full scalability, resilience, and agility of the cloud. It can also reduce costs over the long term.<\/p>\n The drawbacks to refactoring include cost and time. Rebuilding your application to be cloud-native doesn\u2019t happen overnight. It takes specialized skills, and you won\u2019t start seeing value from your migration as quickly as you might from rehosting or replatforming.<\/p>\n From assessment to adoption, Intellias has helped many companies across industries successfully migrate to AWS over the years.<\/p>\n When a national telecommunications<\/strong> provider with an on-premises data warehouse was facing skyrocketing maintenance costs and scalability issues, it wanted to explore an AWS cloud migration to help control costs and be more resource-efficient.<\/p>\n Intellias built a custom cloud solution<\/a> architecture, measured performance, assessed resource requirements, and calculated expected infrastructure costs in a two-month proof of concept that let the team validate their AWS migration strategy. And since they also wanted to accelerate growth and innovation, we upgraded their underlying data and analytics infrastructure.<\/p>\n With performance benchmarking from Intellias, the client is confident they will considerably cut infrastructure expenses, increase revenue, and easily scale their business by moving to AWS. Read the whole story<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
Why so many organizations are moving to AWS<\/h2>\n
Scalability<\/h3>\n
Benefits<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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How AWS provides scalability<\/h4>\n
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Reliability<\/h3>\n
Benefits<\/h4>\n
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How AWS provides reliability<\/h4>\n
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Security<\/h3>\n
Benefits<\/h4>\n
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How AWS provides security<\/h4>\n
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Global reach<\/h3>\n
Benefits<\/h4>\n
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How AWS\u2019s global reach helps<\/h4>\n
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If the cloud\u2019s so great, why would anyone hesitate?<\/h2>\n
Existing investments<\/h3>\n
Upfront costs<\/h3>\n
Skeptical stakeholders<\/h3>\n
Application interdependencies<\/h3>\n
Concerns of downtime during migration<\/h3>\n
Lack of cloud expertise<\/h3>\n
Seven steps to a successful cloud journey<\/h2>\n
1. Get executive buy-in and sponsorship<\/h4>\n
2. Adopt a cloud-first strategy<\/h4>\n
3. Invest in organizational change<\/h4>\n
4. Create an adoption roadmap<\/h4>\n
5. Establish a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE)<\/h4>\n
6. Publish principles & standards<\/h4>\n
7. Champion experimentation<\/h4>\n
An exploration of infrastructure and application migration to the cloud<\/h2>\n
Application migration methods: Rehosting, replatforming, rearchitecting<\/h3>\n
Cross-industry AWS migration success stories: Transformations and achievements<\/h2>\n
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