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Migrating to Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a journey. It often feels daunting to begin this journey, but it doesn't have to be that way. In this article, I'll walk through five key strategies that, both isolated and combined, will help ensure your migration to AWS goes as smoothly as possible.
1. Follow a proven process
A successful migration involves both preparation and moving workloads. Don't prepare, prepare to fail, as the saying goes. The migration journey can be divided into four main steps.
Discover: This phase is about defining the initial scope as much as possible. Don’t worry about the why, how, or when. Focus on documenting which workloads you want to migrate.
Evaluate: You now know what you want to migrate. Here you can think about the why, how and when. Any migration should have clear technical and/or business drivers that can be outlined in a business case. At this point, discuss early on how and in what order you want to migrate.
Mobilize: You wouldn't build a house on weak foundations, so don't migrate workloads without properly configuring AWS. Make sure you set up a strong landing zone that complies with the AWS Well-Architected Framework. This means you'll be safe, operational and cost-conscious from day one.
Migrate and modernize: The end of the process is about migrating and modernizing applications. This should go smoothly if you have done the preparation correctly. You have to take aspects into account, e.g. E.g., when or if you can tolerate a transition window, and clearly document rollback plans if things don't go quite according to plan.
Related: Are you looking for cloud solutions? Lessons from Amazon Web Services.
2. Assign a migration pattern to each workload early on
AWS defines a series of migration patterns known as the 7Rs. This set of patterns covers the entire spectrum, from decommissioning workloads to completely re-architecting them to take full advantage of AWS. A complete list of 7Rs can be found below.
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Elimination
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Retained
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Rejoice
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Relocation
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Buyback
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Replace the platform
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Remodel
Assigning a migration pattern to each workload early, typically in the assessment phase, lays the foundation for the later phases of mobilization and migration. These patterns aren't set in stone, but establishing a north star for your migration will help keep the journey moving in the right direction.
3. Transform not only your technology, but also your business
People, processes and tools are the trio that many of you will be familiar with. The domains that are essential for a successful migration are no different. When embarking on a migration, it's all too easy to get caught up in the new and shiny world of designing AWS architectures and dream of better days ahead. You must not forget what underlies every successful migration: operational readiness.
Running workloads on AWS brings several changes that you should consider in your operational posture. Among these, you should prioritize these the highest:
Cloud financial management: AWS brings with it a completely different cost model – there is a sudden shift from capital expenditure (CapEx) to operating expenditure (OpEx). On-site, it's often easy to allocate capital costs – you can link a purchased physical piece of infrastructure directly to the cost center that requested it. With AWS, you need to consider how or whether you want to allocate costs at a higher granularity and implement the necessary mechanisms to make this possible.
Resilience and Disaster Recovery (DR): A major benefit of migrating to AWS is the increased possibility of resiliency. But have you considered your resilience needs? By defining your return-to-operations (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) objectives, you can determine what level of resiliency you need. AWS has published an excellent white paper on DR in the cloud, which also includes guidance on defining a DR strategy depending on your RTO and RPO goals while taking into account the desire for additional spending.
Security: Operating in the cloud brings with it a change in mindset around security. They work on a “shared responsibility model” where AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud (i.e. the physical security of the data centers) and you are responsible for the security in the cloud (i.e. the configuration of your data center workload). You need to consider how this impacts your existing tools and processes and evaluate whether cloud-native security tools are a better fit for you.
Related: Making Change: Four Steps to Enabling Cloud Transformation in Your Organization
4. Use the Well-Architected Framework
The Well-Architected Framework provides prescriptive guidance across six pillars designed to facilitate the development and implementation of solutions that adhere to best practices. The pillars are operational excellence, safety, cost optimization, reliability, performance efficiency and sustainability.
Within the framework exists the concept of lenses. These are workload or use case-specific additions to the standard instructions. One such lens is the migration lens. It covers the usual pillars, but provides specific migration-related guidance focused on the well-known and proven phases of the migration journey (Discover, Assess, Mobilize, Migrate and Modernize).
Keeping this framework and all additional aspects in mind and evaluating against the guidelines throughout the migration journey will increase the chance of successful decision-making and subsequently a seamless migration.
5. Use specialized AWS partners
For large and complex migrations, it is worth working with a specialized partner to support you on your journey. AWS makes it easy to identify the right partner through a variety of specialization programs. There are three important types of specializations to consider when evaluating a partner:
Competencies: These are externally verified awards that confirm that a partner has deep expertise and proven experience in an industry (e.g. financial services), use case (e.g. migration and modernization), or workload type (e.g. Microsoft).
Service Delivery: These are specifically focused on an AWS service (e.g. Amazon RDS) and are awarded when partners can demonstrate that they can use that service to deliver solutions to a consistently high standard and in line with best practices.
Well-Architected: The Well-Architected framework we discussed earlier has a dedicated partner program that recognizes those partners who are particularly experienced in designing, evaluating, and resolving AWS best practices.
You can search for a suitable partner in the AWS Partner Finder.
Related: 4 Reasons Leaders Need to Accelerate Cloud Adoption
You should now have several key strategies in mind that will help you make your migration smooth. If you work according to a proven process and rely on a specialized partner when necessary, you will stay on the right track. Mapping your workloads to migration patterns as early as possible allows you to leverage the Well-Architected Framework as you prepare to design your target architecture. Don’t forget to take the entire organization with you on the migration journey. A successful migration can only be considered truly successful if everyone agrees with the transformation and benefits from it.
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