5 Critical AWS Migration Best Practices

Previously we covered why you need a cloud migration project plan and the common cloud migration risks your business should avoid. This time we will specifically discuss one of our favorite public cloud services providers—Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud—and what best practices your business should implement when migrating to the AWS Cloud. 

Your AWS Migration Strategy and Migration Best Practices

Cloud computing offers many advantages for businesses today—like lower IT costs, increased IT efficiency, ease of use for remote workers, and faster deployment times compared to on-premises solutions. Choosing a public cloud provider in 2020 means you have a myriad of options at your disposal. There are many public cloud providers you may be familiar with—such as Azure from Microsoft, AWS from Amazon Web Services, IBM Cloud, and the Google Cloud Platform. Your team also has the option to choose which cloud services provider works best for your business. In this article, we will cover Amazon Web Services’ best practices and how your team can reap the benefits of cloud computing in 2020.

What are AWS Cloud Migration Best Practices?

When migrating workloads from an on-premises environment, hosting facility, or another public cloud to AWS, you need to keep a few things in mind. ThorTech engineers have years of experience working with AWS Cloud services and have seen our clients benefit from migrating workloads from applications, websites, databases, storage, physical or virtual servers, or entire data centers. Throughout our years of experience, we have developed a list of five AWS migration best practices we implement for our clients with successful results. This is our proven approach to AWS migration, and it ensures your business can reduce downtime and optimize your cloud environment. 

1. What should my business know before migrating to AWS Cloud?

Before migrating to an AWS Cloud environment from an on-premise or datacenter, it is vital you ensure every member of your team is on the same page. All members of your team—from the IT Department to the HR department—should be aware of the changes in business practices and processes that may impact them once the migration is complete, and they should receive proper training to meet these challenges. An effective AWS Cloud migration first needs to have all organization members working in concert to create a cohesive and error-free migration plan. An AWS Cloud migration will allow your business to grow, scale, save on IT costs, and create greater flexibility in your organization. We recommend creating a clear roadmap of the way your business will interact with IT and identify the roles and responsibilities your team will take on once the migration is complete. These are important aspects of your organization’s overall security posture and business agility.

2. How can I optimize my AWS migration for my business agility?

The best thing about cloud adoption is that your organization can benefit from the automation of many tasks previously performed manually. This not only saves time but creates a more cost-effective solution compared to traditional data centers. Gather your executive team and first discuss what processes can be optimized through automation and take advantage of the opportunities your cloud migration can provide. The best use case for AWS migration is automation—from DevOps to application functionality, data analytics, SaaS deployment, and machine learning, the migration journey is worth it when you consider the benefits of automation for your entire business ecosystem. By automating tasks like data analysis, reporting, and other functions you can serve your customers while freeing up engineers to work on more hands-on projects. This adds value to your business while allowing you to remain flexible and delegate limited resources. We recommend performing tests on your new cloud monitoring capabilities before completing your migration—along with stress testing and root cause analysis—for a successful cloud migration process.

3. In what order should I migrate my applications, data, and other assets to AWS Cloud?

We recommend migrating your least complex applications first to the AWS Cloud to mitigate any risks from data loss or application latency. Once those applications and data have been migrated successfully, we recommend finally moving the most critical applications and data last. This ensures a smooth transition with fewer headaches. We also recommend employing a secure data backup of any required data your organization may need before migrating. This ensures that your business will still access all the vital data it needs if any data loss or outages occur. With proper planning, IT support, assistance from service providers, and buy-in from start to finish, your team can execute a successful AWS managed services migration plan and easily benefit from all the AWS cloud features you need.

4. What role does cloud security play in my AWS migration?

It is important to refer to your possible compliance requirements by ensuring the separation of duties and least access privileges for sensitive information is followed. A survey of AWS users found that 73% experienced issues with their cloud environments as a result of misconfigurations. Talk to your cloud vendor or security professional and ensure that your cloud operations are properly configured. They will encourage you to implement all necessary cloud migration security steps—like two-factor authentication, end-user security training, and application migration security. Finally, you must decide what IT assets you will be migrating to the AWS Cloud infrastructure and what you will keep on-premise or in a data center environment. This secures a streamlined migration plan and helps to minimize the risks of missing dependencies during your migration.

5. What is my post-migration strategy?

Post-migration monitoring, evaluation, and management is just as important as AWS migration planning. If your business has a comprehensive monitoring strategy in practice, you can ensure that you manage every detail and satisfy all your stakeholders. If your team worries about visibility and control during a cloud migration, we recommend consulting with veteran cloud migration and security professionals before beginning a migration. With data-driven insights into your application architecture, you can rest easy knowing your environment’s performance is optimized. This will empower your team to make smarter decisions regarding your business process and infrastructure, helping to balance cost and performance. 

How do I optimize and complete a successful AWS Cloud migration?

Well, you start with a certified AWS Partner to plan, execute, and deliver a successful cloud migration strategy for your organization. Our AWS Data Migration Service is instrumental in simplifying our clients’ workflow processes, improving security and visibility in the overall system, reducing overhead in the software development life cycle, and providing game-changing flexibility in bringing new features to the market. We design and implement roadmaps for the adoption of a cloud computing environment for our clients, saving them substantial amounts of money in their IT infrastructure budget. 

We also leverage DevOps automation, enabling clients to improve their teams’ productivity. We can help guide you every step of the way in working towards new DevOps models or optimizing existing processes.

Our certified AWS Cloud Engineers can consult on a range of cloud migration projects. Our AWS Partners are happy to help you determine whether a cloud migration is right for you, plan a migration, execute a migration, and perform QA testing. Our clients find our services enable them to optimize IT infrastructure costs, improve the scalability of business applications and workflows, meet their business goals, and save substantial amounts of money. In every migration project we take on, we aim to provide the highest quality of service and to be a consulting partner you can trust. 

Contact ThorTech today to begin your AWS Cloud migration project.

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