Migrating your existing applications to Amazon Web Services (AWS) managed services providers is the best way to design, develop, test and deploy applications with greater speed and agility. In this article, we’ll cover the five steps you need to follow when you decide to migrate to AWS cloud.
As with any other migration project, you’ll have to factor in the one-time costs of migrating your existing applications and the complexity of your current architecture. You also need to think about how much effort you are willing to put into migrating to AWS managed services providers and the resistance you might face from your staff when moving to AWS cloud. These factors will ultimately determine whether you end up with a successful migration.
Cloud Assessment Phase
The first phase of your migration involves creating a business case for transitioning to AWS cloud. This is where you consider the costs and savings associated with implementing a cloud-based infrastructure as well as the economic benefits of AWS managed services providers.
After your financial assessment, you’ll be able to estimate your monthly costs using the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator1. Amazon recommends that you project costs over a period of 1, 3 and five years. Doing this will allow you to see significant savings with moving to AWS managed services providers.
In addition to the costs, you also need to perform an in-depth security and compliance assessment to ensure your data is kept safe once it’s on the cloud. You need to identify which datasets you’ll move to the cloud and which ones you’ll keep on your existing infrastructure. The best way to do this is by consulting with your security advisors.
Proof of Concept
Once you’ve considered the costs and security risks of moving to the cloud, the next step is to get a proof of concept. During this phase, you should explore the AWS Management Console and learn how to use the command line tools, AWS API, SDKs, and Firefox plug-ins. It’s also important to learn how to use the AWS Identity, and Access Management (IAM) features so that you can create multiple users and manage the permissions for your AWS account.
To build your proof of concept, you’ll need to deploy small datasets of your infrastructure to test how different parts of your applications would work with AWS managed services providers2. Throughout this process, you should actively gain hands-on experience with Web Server AMI. You also need to learn how to manage/monitor your application using Amazon CloudWatch.
Migrating your data
Before you commit to AWS managed services providers , you should look at the different storage options available to you. There are five main storages available on AWS Cloud: Amazon S3 + CloudFront, Amazon EC2 Ephemeral Store, Amazon EBS, Amazon SimpleDB, and Amazon RDS. Amazon S3 + CloudFront is great for media files, audio, video, images, Backups, archives, versioning, but not ideal for database and file systems. Amazon EC2 Ephemeral Store is the best option for storing config data, scratch files, and TempDB. However, it’s not a good solution for shared drives or sensitive data.
You should use Amazon EBS for clusters, boot data, or log data, but not for shared drives or sensitive data. If you want to store Querying, Indexing Mapping, tagging, clickstream logs, metadata, or configuration data, then Amazon SimpleDB is your best choice. For web apps, complex transactional systems, and inventory, you’re better off using Amazon RDS for storage. AWS also has an import/export feature for uploading data USB 2.0 or eSATA storage devices into Amazon S3 buckets. This is especially useful in situations where transferring data over the internet becomes too costly or time-consuming.
Application Migration
There are two main strategies for migrating to the cloud: the forklift migration strategy and hybrid migration strategy3. The forklift migration strategy involves moving all your applications to the cloud at the same time. This strategy is ideal for web applications and backup systems that can be considered single components. All it takes is a few code changes, and you’ll be able to move your existing applications.
A lower-risk alternative to the forklift migration strategy is the hybrid migration strategy. This strategy involves you moving parts of your infrastructure one part at a time. This strategy is especially useful when dealing with large, complex systems with many different applications involved.
Using AWS cloud
After successfully migrating to the cloud, you’ll need to optimize your infrastructure using all the available tools. Make sure you take advantage of Amazon EC2’s auto scaling service and use Amazon CloudFront for your S3 Buckets. You’ll also need to use Amazon Elastic MapReduce to analyze your data. And leverage AWS Cloud’s scriptable infrastructure to automate your entire software development and deployment lifecycle.
You should also use the AWS Management Console to monitor your entire datacenter and use virtualization. And data snapshots to make the disaster recovery implementation in the cloud much less expensive and simpler. By continually automating your infrastructure on AWS managed services providers, your business will be more profitable and efficient.
Sources
- https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html
- http://aws-managed-services-providers-aws-cloud/
- http://www.connectria.com/blog/migrating-to-aws/
About the Author
Jerome Okutho is an experienced content marketer at Nclouds cloud services, his articles focus on balancing informative with cloud-related needs. nClouds uses a variety of open source and AWS tools, helps with cloud migration to drive growth for the company and improve the collaboration between software and IT teams.
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