AWS Migration #1: Assess

200-level guide to Assess Phase in AWS Migration

This is the first article of the multipart series on AWS Migration. When searching for a new apartment, you begin by assessing your requirements and the items you currently have. Likewise, when embarking on your transition to the cloud, you begin by assessing your needs and the structure of your organization.

During the assessment phase, the emphasis lies on assessing and exploring your existing infrastructure, processes, and requirements. This may entail examining the components of your source premise, such as the number and type of servers, databases, and networking infrastructure, and conducting a cost comparison between on-premises and the cloud platform you are transitioning to.

AWS has created various tools to assist with these tasks, minimizing uncertainty during migration and offering a clearer understanding of potential costs and benefits.

CART (Cloud Readiness Assessment Tool)

How this works is that it has 47-question surveys based on 47 CAF capabilities, and answers to these questions shape up the plan for the migration & evaluation of the organization’s readiness. This survey can be conducted through personal interviews or self-assessment.

MRA (Migration Readiness Assessment)

These questions delve deeper than those of CART, providing a thorough evaluation of the organization’s structure and needs. They involve one-on-one meetings with the organization’s architects to discuss and plan specific aspects related to their domain and business case.

This assessment offers valuable insights into organization motivation and supports the Migration Acceleration Program (MAP). It is exclusively offered to AWS Professional Services, APN Partners, and AWS Solution Architects.

The Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) offers financial assistance to support your migration process. When transitioning from on-premises to the cloud, you typically incur infrastructure costs on both ends. MAP helps reduce those expenses.

Migration Evaluator (formally known as TSO Logic)

The Migration Evaluator assists organizations in overcoming analysis paralysis. It evaluates the number of servers in an organization’s data centers and identifies their purpose and specifications. By analyzing your portfolio, the migration evaluator recommends appropriate EC2 instance types and specifications based on current costs.

The team collects data about your organization’s infrastructure using a data collector. They analyze the data and provide various information, including cost modeling and business value such as productivity, agility, and sustainability, including carbon footprint details. To avail of this service, you must submit a request.

This agentless collector ensures high security as it cannot access data within your VMs. However, it faces a challenge in collecting application-level data, which is sometimes necessary. To address this issue, the collector offers several options. One of them is server dependency mapping, which utilizes TCP connection data to map server communication. Another option is agent-based collection, which aids in application discovery.

By the conclusion of your assessment phase, it is expected that you will have developed a business case that takes into account both the business aspect of your organization and your organization portfolio.

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Next: AWS Migration #2: Mobilize