A Complete Guide to Planning an AWS Migration
There is a lot to consider when planning an AWS migration. This complete guide walks you through it.


Want to get up and running fast in the cloud? We provide cloud and DevOps consulting to startups and small to medium-sized enterprise. Schedule a no-obligation call today.
Migrating to the cloud has become imperative for businesses that seek scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has emerged as a leader in cloud solutions, offering many services catering to various business needs. If you're considering migrating to AWS, this comprehensive guide will walk you through the process to ensure a seamless transition.
Understand Why You Should Migrate to AWS
The decision to move to the cloud often stems from business needs and goals. As one of the pioneering cloud service providers, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has proven its mettle in catering to diverse industry requirements. Here's a deeper dive into the compelling reasons why businesses are opting for AWS migration:
Scalability: One of the main attractions of AWS is its ability to adapt to your business size and demands. Whether you're a startup experiencing rapid growth or an established enterprise expecting spikes during peak seasons, AWS ensures that you can:
- Scale resources up or down instantly.
- Handle large volumes of traffic and data without performance lag.
- Eliminate the need for upfront capital expenditure on physical servers.
Flexibility: AWS's suite of services is vast and varied. This means:
- Tailored solutions: Choose from various tools and services, from computing and storage options to advanced machine learning and AI tools.
- Multi-platform compatibility: AWS supports numerous operating systems, programming languages, and databases, allowing businesses to select their preferred environment.
Cost-Efficiency: With AWS, you switch from a capital expense model to an operational one, which brings about:
- Pay-as-you-go pricing: You're billed based on your usage, preventing overspending.
- No hidden costs: Say goodbye to costs tied to maintenance, physical space, and cooling of on-premises infrastructure.
- Savings from managed services: AWS offers managed service options, reducing the need for in-house expertise and associated costs.
Reliability and Uptime: AWS's global network of data centers ensures:
- High availability: Even if one data center faces issues, your services can remain unaffected as traffic is rerouted to another healthy data center.
- Robust disaster recovery solutions: AWS provides tools to set up backup and disaster recovery solutions, ensuring business continuity.
Innovation: AWS isn't just a hosting solution; it's a platform for innovation. By migrating, businesses can:
- Tap into advanced AWS services like Lambda (serverless computing), SageMaker (for machine learning), and more.
- Speed up the product development cycle, as developers can quickly set up and tear down environments for testing and deployment.
Security: AWS is built with a core principle of security-first. By migrating, you benefit from:
- AWS's investments in top-tier security certifications.
- A multi-layered security approach, including physical security, encryption, network firewalls, and access controls.
- Tools like AWS Shield for DDoS protection and AWS WAF for protection against web exploits.
Evaluate Your Current Infrastructure
Before leaping to AWS, a crucial step is conducting a comprehensive assessment of your IT infrastructure. This not only aids in streamlining the migration process but also in optimizing costs and ensuring performance consistency in the new environment. Here's a detailed guide on how to scrutinize your current setup:
Software Applications
- Inventory: List all software applications currently in use.
- Dependencies: Identify interdependencies between applications. This can help prioritize migration sequences and identify potential integration challenges.
- Licensing: Check if your current licenses are transferable to a cloud environment or if new licensing models are needed post-migration.
Databases
- Types: Document all types of databases (SQL, NoSQL, etc.) and their versions.
- Size: Determine the size of your databases, which can influence the migration method.
- Performance Metrics: Track metrics like query performance, latency, and throughput to ensure performance doesn't degrade post-migration.
Storage Systems
- Data Volume: Calculate the total volume of data across all systems.
- Data Types: Identify the types of data you manage (structured, unstructured, logs, etc.).
- Access Patterns: Understand which data is frequently accessed versus rarely accessed to make informed decisions about storage solutions in AWS, such as Amazon S3 (for frequently accessed data) or Amazon S3 Glacier (for archival).
Networking Configuration
- Topology: Map out your current network topology, including VPNs, direct connections, and gateways.
- Bandwidth Usage: Measure the average and peak bandwidth to ensure that the connectivity in AWS is sufficient.
- Latency Requirements: Understand latency requirements, especially if your operations are sensitive to delays, to select the suitable AWS regions and availability zones.
Security and Compliance
- Security Policies: Document all security measures in place, including firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and access controls.
- Data Protection: Identify encryption requirements for data at rest and in transit.
- Compliance Needs: Understand any regulatory standards (like GDPR, HIPAA, etc.) your infrastructure needs to meet, which will guide configurations in AWS.
Hardware and Physical Infrastructure
- Server Specifications: Detail your servers' make, model, and specifications. This can guide instance type selection in AWS.
- End-of-life Hardware: Recognize hardware nearing its end of life, which can be prioritized for migration to reduce renewal costs.
- Facilities Overview: Consider costs associated with physical facilities like cooling, power, and rent to estimate potential savings post-migration.
Current Costs
- Operating Costs: Tally up costs tied to current operations, maintenance, and staffing.
- Downtime Costs: Quantify the financial impact of downtimes, if any, in your current setup.
A thorough evaluation of your existing infrastructure is foundational for a successful AWS migration. It facilitates a smooth transition and ensures that your post-migration environment is optimized, cost-effective, and resilient.
Plan Your AWS Migration Strategy
Mapping out a robust migration strategy ensures a seamless transition to AWS. A thoughtful and well-structured approach reduces potential risks, minimizes disruptions, and paves the way for a future-ready cloud environment. Let's delve deeper into crafting an effective AWS migration blueprint:
Select a Migration Strategy AWS suggests several paths based on the 6 R's. Here's an in-depth look:
- Re-hosting (Lift and Shift): This involves migrating applications to AWS without modification. It's typically faster and suitable for organizations looking to migrate quickly.
- Re-platforming: Often known as "lift, tinker, and shift," this approach includes making minor adjustments to the application or environment for optimization in the cloud, such as switching from a traditional database to an AWS-managed database service.
- Repurchasing: Adopting a different product or service, for instance, moving from a traditional CRM to a SaaS model like Salesforce.
- Refactoring/Re-architecting: A more involved process where you re-imagine how the app is architected and coded, typically using cloud-native features. Ideal for businesses looking to add new features, scale, or improve performance.
- Retire: Determine if any parts of your IT portfolio are no longer useful and can be shut down, saving costs.
- Retain: In some cases, it makes sense to keep specific systems in their current environment, either because they're not ready for migration or because of business reasons to keep them on-premises.
Prioritize Migration Order:
- Dependency Analysis: Recognize which applications and databases are interdependent to prevent disruption during migration.
- Business Impact: Consider the impact on business operations. Mission-critical applications might be migrated during off-peak times or later in the migration journey after gaining experience with less critical systems.
Assess Migration Costs:
- Direct Costs: Consider the immediate costs of migration tools, services, and labour.
- Indirect Costs: Factor in potential business disruptions, training, and any changes in operational costs.
- Cost Savings: Estimate savings from retiring old infrastructure, reduced downtime, and operational efficiencies in AWS.
Formulating a well-defined AWS migration strategy is more than a technical requirement; it's a business imperative. It ensures that the migration aligns with the organization's immediate needs and long-term goals, paving the way for a transformative cloud experience.
Choose the Right AWS Migration Tools
When migrating your infrastructure to AWS, the tools you use can make all the difference between a seamless transition and one fraught with obstacles. Amazon Web Services provides many tools designed specifically for various migration needs. Let's delve into these tools and understand how they can streamline your migration process:
AWS Migration Hub:
- Purpose: Centralized location to track the progress of app migrations across multiple AWS and partner solutions.
- Benefits:
- Provides visibility into your portfolio, allowing you to make informed decisions.
- Streamlines the process by allowing the tracking of all migrations in one place.
AWS Application Discovery Service:
- Purpose: Helps enterprises identify and collect usage and configuration data of servers in their IT environment.
- Benefits:
- Automates the collection of data related to server utilization.
- Offers detailed dependency mapping to identify how servers interact.
- Provides important data which can be used to plan the migration.
AWS Database Migration Service:
- Purpose: Migrate databases to AWS with minimal downtime.
- Benefits:
- Supports database types, including Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL.
- Continuously replicates changes to ensure data is in sync.
- Also can be used for continuous data replication taking advantage of its high availability.
AWS Server Migration Service:
- Purpose: Automate the migration of on-premises workloads to AWS.
- Benefits:
- Supports incremental replication, reducing server downtime.
- Automates, schedules, and tracks incremental replications of live server volumes.
AWS DataSync:
- Purpose: Transfer large volumes of data rapidly and securely from on-premises to AWS.
- Benefits:
- Speeds up migration by using parallel transfers and automatic network optimizations.
- Securely transfers data over the wire with encryption.
- Can be used for ongoing data transfer needs.
AWS Transfer Family:
- Purpose: Migrate file transfer workflows to AWS without changing end-user behaviour or applications.
- Benefits:
- Supports popular protocols like SFTP, FTPS, and FTP.
- Integrates seamlessly with AWS services for storage, logging, and monitoring.
AWS Snowball & Snowmobile:
- Purpose: Physically transport vast amounts of data when internet transfer is not feasible.
- Benefits:
- Snowball is a petabyte-scale data transport solution with onboard storage and compute capabilities.
- Snowmobile is an exabyte-scale data transfer service designed to move massive volumes of data to AWS in weeks, not years.
AWS CloudEndure Migration:
- Purpose: Provides a highly automated lift-and-shift solution.
- Benefits:
- Ensures minimal downtime during migration.
- Offers a simple, agent-based model that's OS agnostic.
- Handles large-scale migrations efficiently.
Selecting the right tools is paramount to the success of your AWS migration journey. These tools, optimized for various tasks and stages of migration, ensure that your move to the AWS cloud is efficient, secure, and minimally disruptive. By familiarizing yourself with these AWS tools and services, you set the stage for a smooth and beneficial migration in the long run.
Ensure Data Security and Compliance
Moving to the cloud introduces a shared responsibility model, where AWS is in charge of the security "of" the cloud (infrastructure, networking, etc.), and you are responsible for security "in" the cloud (your data, applications, etc.). Giving ample attention to safeguarding your data and ensuring compliance with various regulations is crucial. Here's a comprehensive look into how you can maintain high standards of security and compliance when migrating to AWS:
Understanding the AWS Shared Responsibility Model:
- Infrastructure Security: AWS handles the security of its infrastructure, covering hardware, software, networking, and facilities.
- Data and Application Security: Customers are responsible for protecting their data, applications, and configurations within the AWS environment.
Identity and Access Management (IAM):
- User Management: Use AWS IAM to create users, assign custom permissions, and manage AWS resource access.
- Roles & Policies: Create roles with specific permissions and attach them to AWS resources. Define policies to grant or deny permissions explicitly.
- Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Enable MFA to add an extra layer of security to user sign-ins and privileged actions.
Data Protection:
- Encryption in Transit: Ensure data is encrypted while being transferred to and from AWS services using protocols like TLS.
- Encryption at Rest: Use AWS services like Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and Amazon EBS, which support data encryption at rest.
- Key Management: AWS Key Management Service (KMS) allows you to create and manage cryptographic keys and control their use.
Network Security:
- VPC: Set up a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to provision a logically isolated network within the AWS Cloud, where you can define your IP address range, subnets, and configuration.
- Security Groups and NACLs: Configure security groups as virtual firewalls to control inbound traffic and outbound traffic. Use Network Access Control Lists (NACLs) for an added layer of security at the subnet level.
- AWS Shield and AWS WAF: Protect your applications against DDoS attacks with AWS Shield and define web traffic rules with AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF).
Monitoring and Auditing:
- AWS CloudTrail: Track user activity and API calls within your AWS environment.
- Amazon CloudWatch: Monitor AWS resources in real-time, collecting logs and setting up alerts.
- AWS Config: Assess, evaluate, and audit configurations of AWS resources over time.
Compliance:
- Understand AWS Compliance Programs: AWS aligns with multiple compliance programs, such as HIPAA, GDPR, and FedRAMP. Familiarize yourself with these to understand how AWS maintains compliance.
- Regular Audits: Periodically assess and audit your AWS environment to ensure adherence to internal policies and external regulations.
- AWS Artifact: Access detailed reports on AWS's risk and compliance from third-party auditors.
Incident Response:
- AWS GuardDuty: Utilize this threat detection service to monitor for malicious or unauthorized activities.
- Plan & Document: Have an incident response plan. Document potential threats, response strategies, and communication plans.
- Test: Regularly test your incident response plan to ensure its effectiveness and make necessary updates based on learnings.
While AWS provides a sturdy foundation, ensuring security and compliance requires a proactive approach from businesses. By leveraging AWS's vast suite of security tools and services and implementing best practices, organizations can create a robust, secure, and compliant cloud environment. Remember that security is a continuous journey that demands regular evaluations and adjustments.
Engage Stakeholders
One of the often-underestimated facets of a successful migration is key stakeholders' active engagement and buy-in. Their perspectives, concerns, and feedback can make or break the migration process. Engaging stakeholders is not just about keeping them informed; it's about fostering collaboration and understanding, addressing their concerns, and leveraging their expertise to ensure a smooth transition to AWS. Here's how you can effectively engage your stakeholders during AWS migration:
Identify Key Stakeholders:
- Technical Teams: System administrators, developers, database administrators, and network managers who will be hands-on with the migration.
- Business Units: Teams or individuals whose operations heavily rely on the migrated applications and data.
- Leadership & Management: Senior managers and executives who oversee the broader business strategy.
- End-users: Those who regularly interact with the systems, applications, or data and will experience any changes firsthand.
- Compliance & Legal Teams: Professionals ensuring the migration adheres to industry regulations and internal policies.
Establish Clear Communication Channels:
- Regular Updates: Schedule periodic meetings to discuss progress, challenges, and solutions.
- Feedback Mechanisms: Set up channels where stakeholders can ask questions, share concerns, or offer suggestions.
- Emergency Contacts: Ensure a defined channel for immediate communication during crucial migration stages or unexpected issues.
Involve Stakeholders in Decision-making:
- Collaborative Planning: Bring diverse perspectives into the planning phase, ensuring a comprehensive and realistic migration strategy.
- Priority Setting: Engage business units to understand which systems or applications are most critical and should be migrated first.
- Testing and Validation: Utilize end-users and technical teams in testing processes to ensure the migrated systems meet functional and user expectations.
Educate and Train:
- Training Sessions: Offer training on the new AWS environment, focusing on daily operations changes.
- Documentation: Provide easy-to-access resources like FAQs, manuals, and guides related to the migration and the new environment.
- Workshops: Conduct hands-on workshops, especially for technical teams, to familiarize them with AWS tools and services.
Address Concerns Proactively:
- Security & Compliance: Often a top concern, especially in regulated industries. Engage with legal and compliance teams early on to address potential issues.
- Downtime & Disruption: Communicate potential downtime or disruptions well in advance and work with business units to minimize operational impacts.
- Cost Implications: Keep the management informed about expected costs and potential ROI from the migration.
Celebrate Milestones:
- Acknowledgment: Recognize and celebrate when key migration milestones are achieved, reinforcing positive progress.
- Feedback Collection: After each significant phase, collect feedback on what went well and areas of improvement for future stages.
Engaging stakeholders is a multifaceted endeavour that extends beyond mere communication. It involves active collaboration, continuous learning, and genuine consideration of diverse perspectives. By actively involving stakeholders throughout the AWS migration process, businesses can foster a sense of ownership, ensure a smoother transition, and pave the way for long-term success in the cloud environment.
Train Your Team
The success of an AWS migration doesn't solely rest on the technology or tools used but also hinges significantly on the human element involved: your team. As the technological landscape shifts, your team's skill sets and knowledge base must evolve alongside it. Training is paramount in ensuring this. Here's a detailed look at the importance of training and how to ensure your team is well-prepared for the AWS migration:
Understand the Skill Gap:
- Assessment: Start by evaluating your team's current skills. Understand their proficiency levels in the technologies and tools you currently use.
- Future Needs: Determine what skills are necessary post-migration. This includes AWS-specific capabilities and broader cloud management skills.
- Gap Analysis: Identify the difference between the current skill sets and future needs to map out your training requirements.
Choose the Right Training Modules:
- AWS Training: AWS offers many training programs. Some of the recommended ones include:
- AWS Technical Essentials: Introduces AWS products, services, and standard solutions.
- Architecting on AWS: Covers the fundamentals of building IT infrastructure on AWS.
- Advanced Architecting on AWS: Delves deeper into complex solutions and architectures.
- Third-party Courses: Numerous third-party platforms offer AWS migration, optimization, and security courses. Platforms like Coursera, Udemy, and A Cloud Guru are popular choices.
Hands-on Workshops and Labs:
- Practical Experience: Theoretical knowledge needs to be coupled with hands-on experience. Encourage your team to work on mock projects or sandbox environments to practice their new skills.
- AWS Labs: AWS offers labs and exercises that allow users to get hands-on experience with AWS services in a controlled environment.
Certification:
- Professional Growth: AWS certifications are globally recognized and can be valuable for your team's professional development.
- Types of Certifications: AWS offers a range of certifications like AWS Certified Solutions Architect, AWS Certified Developer, and AWS Certified SysOps Administrator, among others. Encourage your team to pursue these certifications based on their roles and career aspirations.
Regular Knowledge Updates:
- Stay Updated: The cloud environment, especially AWS, continuously evolves. Regular training sessions, webinars, or workshops can help your team stay updated.
- AWS Events: Encourage your team to attend AWS events, like AWS re:Invent or AWS Summits, which often introduce new services, features, and best practices.
Mentorship and Peer Learning:
- In-house Experts: If you have team members proficient with AWS, consider setting up a mentorship program. Their insights and experience can be invaluable.
- Learning Groups: Establish peer learning groups where team members can discuss challenges, share solutions, and learn from each other's experiences.
Feedback and Continuous Improvement:
- Feedback Loops: Regularly collect feedback from your team regarding the training programs. Understand what's working, where there are gaps, and how the training can be improved.
- Iterative Learning: Based on feedback, continuously update and evolve the training modules to keep them relevant and effective.
Training your team is not just about equipping them with new skills but also about fostering a culture of continuous learning and adaptability. As the adage goes, "Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime." By investing in training, you're ensuring a smoother AWS migration and building a resilient, adaptable, and forward-looking team ready to tackle future challenges.
Execute the Migration
Once the planning, stakeholder engagement, and training are in place, the next critical phase is the actual execution of the migration. This is where the rubber meets the road. A well-executed migration minimizes disruptions, reduces downtime, and ensures data integrity. Let's delve deeper into the steps and considerations for a successful AWS migration execution:
Establish a Migration Window:
- Business Downtime: Engage with stakeholders to determine the best time for migration, ensuring minimal disruption to business operations.
- Notification: Inform all relevant parties about the migration window, potential impacts, and expected outcomes.
Finalize the Migration Checklist:
- Prerequisites: Ensure that all pre-migration tasks are completed, such as setting up AWS accounts, configuring networking, and preparing data backups.
- Dependencies: Clearly understand and list the dependencies between various applications and services that are being migrated.
Choose a Migration Pattern:
- Rehosting (Lift and Shift): Directly move applications to AWS without any code modification.
- Replatforming: Make a few cloud optimizations to achieve a tangible benefit without changing the core architecture.
- Refactoring: Re-imagine how the application is architected and developed using cloud-native features.
- Decide on the Pattern: Based on the assessment done during the planning phase, determine which migration pattern is suitable for each application or service.
Begin the Data Migration:
- AWS Data Transfer Services: Use AWS tools such as AWS DataSync, AWS Snowball, or AWS Direct Connect for transferring large datasets.
- Database Migration: Consider using the AWS Database Migration Service for a seamless transfer if migrating databases.
Migrate Applications and Services:
- Application Transfer: Use migration tools like AWS Migration Hub or third-party solutions to transfer applications.
- Configuration: Ensure that applications are correctly configured to communicate with databases, other services, or external systems post-migration.
Monitor the Migration:
- AWS Migration Hub: Use this tool to track the progress of application migrations.
- Alerts: Set up notifications for migration failures, discrepancies, or infrastructure issues.
- Logs: Maintain detailed logs of the migration process to aid in troubleshooting and post-migration analysis.
Testing:
- Functionality: After migration, test all applications and services to ensure they function as expected.
- Performance: Check for performance degradation or improvements and ensure all applications meet the set performance benchmarks.
- Security: Validate all security configurations and ensure no vulnerabilities are introduced during the migration.
Iterative Approach:
- Pilot Migration: Consider migrating a more minor, non-critical application or dataset first as a pilot to understand potential challenges.
- Phase-wise Migration: Instead of migrating everything at once, consider a phased approach, which allows for more control and the ability to rectify issues without widespread impact.
Executing a migration is challenging, requiring meticulous attention to detail, real-time problem-solving, and close collaboration across various teams. While the migration's technical aspects are crucial, maintaining clear communication lines, ensuring data integrity, and promptly addressing any challenges are equally important. With thorough preparation and vigilant monitoring, businesses can transition smoothly to AWS, reaping the cloud's myriad benefits.
Optimize After Migration
The migration journey doesn't end once your applications and data are moved to AWS. Post-migration optimization is crucial to fully leverage the capabilities of the AWS environment, ensuring that you get the best out of your cloud investment in cost, performance, and scalability. This phase helps fine-tune the migrated resources and ensures you're harnessing the full power of AWS. Let's explore the steps and considerations for optimization post-migration:
Cost Optimization:
- Rightsize Resources: Review and adjust the size of your EC2 instances, RDS databases, and other AWS resources based on actual usage.
- Reserve Instances: For predictable workloads, consider using Reserved Instances or Savings Plans to save costs over the long term.
- Spot Instances: Utilize spot instances for stateless, fault-tolerant, or flexible workloads to achieve significant savings.
- Delete Unused Resources: Regularly identify and terminate orphaned resources like unused EBS volumes, old snapshots, or idle EC2 instances.
Performance Optimization:
- Monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch: Use CloudWatch to monitor the performance of your AWS resources, set up alarms, and respond to potential issues.
- Elastic Load Balancing: Distribute incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances, to ensure optimal performance.
- Content Delivery with Amazon CloudFront: Distribute content globally with low latency, high data transfer speeds, and no commitments.
Scalability and Elasticity:
- Auto Scaling: Implement AWS Auto Scaling to automatically adjust the number of EC2 instances up or down as per demand.
- Elastic File System (EFS): Use Amazon EFS for scalable and elastic file storage to support fluctuating workloads.
- Database Scaling: Consider Amazon Aurora or Amazon DynamoDB, which can automatically scale database resources based on application needs.
Security Enhancements:
- Regular Audits: Conduct regular security audits using tools like AWS Security Hub or AWS Config.
- Implement AWS WAF: Use AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) to protect your web applications from common web exploits.
- Encryption: Ensure that data at rest and in transit is encrypted. Utilize AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for centralized management of cryptographic keys.
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD):
- AWS CodePipeline: Implement a CI/CD pipeline with AWS CodePipeline to automate the build, test, and deployment phases.
- AWS CodeBuild and AWS CodeDeploy: Use these tools with CodePipeline for a seamless development-to-deployment flow, promoting rapid iterations and faster time-to-market.
Feedback Loops:
- Stakeholder Feedback: Engage regularly with end-users and stakeholders to gather feedback on application performance, user experience, and potential enhancements.
- Iterative Improvements: Based on feedback, continuously refine and optimize the migrated resources to serve business needs better.
Stay Updated with AWS Innovations:
- AWS What's New: Regularly check AWS's "What's New" page to stay informed about the latest services, features, and best practices.
- Training: Ensure your team undergoes periodic training to remain updated with the latest AWS offerings and enhancements.
Optimization after migration ensures businesses not only migrate to the cloud but thrive in it. Organizations can ensure they're poised to make the most of their AWS environment by focusing on cost-effectiveness, performance enhancements, security, and scalability. The cloud landscape is dynamic, and continuous optimization is the key to staying ahead, serving customers effectively, and maintaining a competitive edge.
In Closing
AWS migration is a significant step towards modernizing your IT infrastructure. With meticulous planning, the right tools, and continuous optimization, businesses can maximize the benefits of AWS, positioning themselves for sustainable growth.
Your Pilot in the Cloud
Looking for expert help designing your cloud architecture or planning and executing your migration projects? Contact us today!


Your Pilot in the Cloud
Contact us today to discuss your cloud strategy! There is no obligation.
