Migration to AWS Cloud – Challenges and Solutions

Cloud migration is a complex effort, and there are many challenges you may run into in your AWS migration project. Here are a few common challenges and tips on how to resolve them.

Resiliency for Compute and Networking Resources

One must ensure that applications hosted on AWS Cloud are highly available and resilient. AWS Cloud instances don’t live forever, so you need to find a way to preserve application state when the application moves between different instances. In addition, you need to ensure resilient connectivity—ensuring that cloud workloads have network access at all times. 

Solution

On the compute side, you can opt for reserved instances to ensure that your machine instances stay yours for a long period of time, but this comes at a cost. Set up replication, or use a service that manages deployment and availability like Elastic Beanstalk. 

On the networking side, if you are working in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon provides active/standby IPSec tunnels and the AWS Direct Connect service that creates a direct connection from your enterprise network into the VPC. Use a combination of both to ensure highly resilient networking.

Cost Management

Many companies move to the cloud without establishing clear KPIs on how much they expect to spend or save after their migration. It is then difficult to understand if the migration was successful from an economic perspective. In addition, cloud environments are dynamic and costs can rapidly change as you adopt new services or scale applications up and down.

Solution

Before migrating, create a clear business case and understand how much your cloud migration should save, or how much you expect it to add to your cost, in exchange for new capabilities you don’t have on-premise. Create an economic model to simulate how much you will spend on AWS across applications, services and projects. It might be helpful to use an AWS calculator so you can more accurately plan your budget.

Moving On-Premise Data and Managing Storage on AWS

How do you move your data smoothly from your current on-premise location to the cloud?

Solution

To address these challenges, companies should consider solutions offered by AWS, such as AWS Direct Connect, which can help them achieve highly resilient, dedicated connections between their Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and on-premise infrastructure. This can also help synchronize your operations and create a centralized point of visibility.

You can also use Amazon CloudWatch to reduce the impact of migration on user experience. CloudWatch can help you identify performance issues in real time and address the root cause before users are affected.

Migration of Legacy system 

Legacy systems are the most important systems that are the backbone of the business-critical operations. Migration of these systems to AWS is the biggest challenge. The businesses have to define the immediate and long-lasting solutions.

Solution

In such cases, hybrid cloud is essential where the legacy system and cloud applications are used. And, over the period of time, the company can move entire processes to the cloud.

Security Concerns

Cloud environments can be as secure as on-premise environments, but their security properties and strategies are radically different. There is a major risk of a “security vacuum”, as applications move from on-premise to the cloud, but existing security tools and strategies don’t go with them. 

Solution

Map out the security and compliance requirements of all applications in your migration project. Identify AWS services and solutions that can provide equivalent or better security measures to those you have today on-premises. And build those services into your deployment plan, ensuring that no application enters the cloud—even in development and testing phases—without the appropriate security measures. See Amazon’s cloud security guidelines. 

How ThinkStraight Can Help

Cloud migration with AWS requires significant planning and expertise, and shifting in a right way saves the cost and meets the business objectives. Hence, it is important to take help of AWS migration experts or partners that offer AWS migration services and avail the benefits of their experience. ThinkStraight has extensive experience helping companies migrate to the AWS cloud. Working with you on a continuous basis, ThinkStraight can help determine the services on AWS that your companies would benefit from, and architect them in a way that best suits your website.