Last Updated on September 10, 2020
Introduction: What is AWS?
Amazon Web Services is a cloud computing platform that offers on-demand cloud computing services, cloud migration and APIs to companies, governments, and individuals as a secured cloud provider platform and various other functionalities. You can also create AWS Application Stack with the Help of Terraform and customize it according to your specific requirements.
For instance: DynamoDB, S3, Elastic Map Reduce, etc. are the AWS analytics services used to process big data such as Hadoop, Spark, Splunk, etc. from one place to another.
There are over 1 million active AWS customers as of now. According to Intricately, many top brands are using AWS services like Netflix, Twitch, Facebook, LinkedIn, BBC, ESPN, Baidu, Turner, etc. are the AWS users.
With AWS, businesses have to pay for what they are using and store data. The same data is used to launch server computers in a cloud computing environment. You can also upload files and organize them via a user-friendly interface. AWS is built on the top of open-source technologies such as MySQL, Xen, and Linux Kernel.
What is AWS Migration?
Cloud migration is the process of storing your data, applications, and moving them from on-premises to the cloud environment. It can also be defined as moving data from one cloud location to another and maintaining an on-premise infrastructure. It helps you to reduce capital investment by availing computing resources on the pay-as-you-use pricing model.
?According to research, it is estimated that by 2020, more than 1/3rd of the data will pass through the cloud.
Prerequisites for Cloud Migration
Various business sectors move their data and applications to grab the benefits of scalability, availability, flexibility, accessibility, and security. Here are a few cloud migrations done by companies:
A) De-clouding
B) Cloud to Cloud migration
C) Local data center to Cloud computing platforms.
?According to Gartner, The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 17.3 percent in 2019 to 206.2billion, up from 175.8 billion in 2018.
Why should you Migrate to AWS?
➤ The application will gain a high volume of traffic.
➤ Lower infrastructure costs
➤ Prepare for future needs
➤ High security
➤ Increase Business Agility
➤ Disaster Recovery
➤ Fast application implementation and deployment
➤ Modernize current IT asset base
?Some points to take into consideration before migrating your data or application into a cloud:
✪ Initially, prepare your app from data to migrate to the cloud.
✪ Calculate the cost of relocating.
✪ Hire skilled personnel that can manage your cloud database.
✪ Choose your inclination in the cloud-based on your business model.
✪ Be ready to face challenges in migrating the application/data.
✪ Lastly, develop a strategy according to your business requirements that enable the migration to be flexible and accessible.
Types of AWS Cloud Migration
?According to Wikipedia, 17.5% of revenue growth was promised in cloud migration and has a forecast for 2022.
It is predicted that there will be a 28% increase in revenue for the year 2022 in cloud migration.
There are three types of delivery models, and they are:
A) SaaS (Software as a Service)
B) IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
C) PaaS (Platform as a Service).
Let’s discuss them one by one:
SaaS (Software as a Service)
➤ It is the top-most layer.
➤ It requires vendor support.
➤ The whole process is done in phases.
➤ We need extensive customization to service.
➤ It is a cost-effective way of migration.
➤ Example: Photoshop, Google docs, Gmail.
IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
✪ Iaas is the foundation of cloud computing.
✪ Developers do the whole process because it is a bit complicated.
✪ It takes a lot of time for migration.
✪ Complexity is based on application functionality.
✪ It is available on-demand or pays as per usage.
✪ It includes data backup/storage and data security services.
✪ Example: AWS is a well known Iaas service provider.
PaaS (Platform as a Service)
➤ Paas is the central layer of cloud computing.
➤ It acts as a test environment.
➤ It offers the runtime on demand.
➤ No control over the infrastructure.
➤ You can use it as per the requirement.
➤ The vendors provide all the necessary functionalities.
➤ The portal facilitates the migration
➤ Example: Microsoft Azure, Force.com.
You can’t miss: Decoding the Cloud Service Models: SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS.
AWS Cloud Migration: 5 Cloud Migration Steps(Move on to Cloud in 2020 )
PHASE 1: Planning and Assessment
The planning and assessment phase is divided into:
1. Financial Assessment
2. Security & Compliance Assessment
3. Technical and Functional assessment
Let us discuss each in detail:
1. Financial Assessment
Before migrating to the cloud, evaluate the cost of moving data to the AWS cloud. Make a detailed analysis of the financial considerations employing a cloud-based infrastructure.
2. Security and Compliance Assessment
If you are thinking about the overall risk tolerance and security threats, it is better to involve security advisers early. Data security is a challenging task, so it is essential to understand the dangers and risks into different categories based on the data.
3. Technical and Functional Assessment
Technical and functional assessment needs to be undertaken when migrating to the cloud. You require to understand which applications suit the most to the cloud architecturally and strategically.
PHASE 2: AWS Migration Tools
Use the following tools if you need easy methods to transfer data at small scales
Glacier CLI– On-premises data → Glacier vaults
S3 CLI– Write commands → Data moves directly into S3 buckets
Rsync– Copy data directly → S3 buckets
PHASE 3: AWS cloud storage option
Decide which storage option suits your requirements
✪ Availability
✪ Durability
✪ Cost
✪ Relational Frequency
✪ Cache-ability
✪ Latency performance
✪ SIze of the object stored
✪ Update frequency
Which storage option to use?
PHASE 4: Migration Strategies
Two main migration strategies will help you to migrate your entire system to cloud without interrupting your business:
1. Forklift Migration Strategy: Tightly coupled and self-contained applications will be served better by this approach.
2. Hybrid Migration Strategy: It is suitable for large systems involving several applications.
PHASE 5: Application Migration Tools
Here are some of the application migration options:
➤ Live migration
➤ Host cloning
➤ Data migration
➤ App containerization
➤ VM conversion
Benefits of Cloud Migration
When you are moving your application and data to the cloud, you must use the cloud services that help you meet your goals smoothly. Many businesses are migrating to cloud computing to get as many of the advantages of the cloud as possible. Here are the top 5 benefits that you are opting for a shared-to-cloud-migration.
Remote collaboration
Migration your application and data to the cloud environment allow you to access remotely from anywhere using communication tools, apps, and software. This helps the workers to collaborate remotely, send files, and data instantly that reduces the time and labor involved in file sharing.
Increased Mobility
Migrating to the cloud makes your IT department productive and allows you to access data and business applications from anywhere via any connected device. Employees are not required to dig through the email to find the information they need and spend hours on the phone with the home office. When you experience real computer problems that cannot be resolved by turning them off and on again, in such situations, you can work from your mobile phone while IT get the computers back online.
Easier Mergers and Acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions are an exciting time for many organizations since they offer opportunities to expand and significantly impact the world. When your data and applications are in the cloud, the transition can happen much faster, and you can instantly access the information to keep working at full speed.
Scalability
Scalability is the second most important advantage if you migrate to the cloud, which saves money for the unused data and upscale as per your business requirements. Future IT infrastructure is made easy with these benefits and reduces the overall workload to focus on the main business goal and help in functional assessment and migration. If your employee is willing to work from home, there is no need to incur and train new talent.
Some other benefits include:
✪ Instant scalability and capacity for upgrading/downgrading
✪ Reduced TOC for infrastructure
✪ Less downtime/higher SLA levels
✪ Enhanced security
✪ Business continuity and faster disaster recovery
Cloud Cost Optimization Strategies
Minimizing Data Transfer Costs
Make sure that your computer services are in the same region because transferring data is free in the same region only. For instance, AWS charges $0.02/GB when you download any file from another AWS region. If you are transferring a lot of cross-region files, it may be cheaper to replicate your object storage basket between regions each time. There are CDN providers who charge a flat fee like CloudFlare and offer huge savings over S3 when a small percentage of original requests will hit your S3 bucket.
Compress Data Before Storage
Applying fast compression algorithms such as LZ4 provides better performance and compresses data that decreases the storage requirements and storage cost. LZ4 helps you compress data at 400 MB/s per core and features a fast decoder in multiple GM/s per core using the compute-intensive compressions (ZSTD and GZIP).
Delete Unwanted Files
The majority of cloud providers offer a feature of Lifecycle management and configure rules for data migration between types of storage and reduce the overall storage costs. All your existing data can be stored in Azure Blob Standard storage. Still, if your data begin to show signs of instability and infrequent access, then you can migrate your data to Azure Cool Blob Storage at a cheaper storage rate. One can use the object lifecycle management feature and expiration of Blobs in Azure as well.
Cache Storage strategically
If you migrate to cloud storage, use memory-based caching as it improves frequently accessed in-memory and reduces the cost of higher-tier cloud storage instead of retrieving data from storage instances. It generates impressive results for performance-sensitive data when replication is needed for resilience.
Design Workloads for Scalability
Scalability is an essential aspect of any public cloud. It uses event-driven compute instances to scale core services such as microservices. Such techniques are intended to utilize more computing resources when the requirements increase and are released for reuse.
Highly Secure AWS development services
Bacancy Technology is the best AWS cloud consulting partner and renowned for offering cloud services like AWS cloud migration services, cloud cost optimization services, DevOps on AWS, and AWS managed services. Being a globally renowned AWS development company, we will help you to optimize and manage the complex architectures on the AWS cloud. If you are searching for AWS certified solutions architects, then get in touch with us to leverage the expertise of our AWS certified developers to bring the power of AWS to your company’s infrastructure.
