Migrating to AWS : a manager's guide : how to foster agility, reduce costs, and bring a competitive edge to your business

Bring agility, cost savings, and a competitive edge to your business by migrating your IT infrastructure to AWS. With this practical book, executive and senior leadership and engineering and IT managers will examine the advantages, disadvantages, and common pitfalls when moving your company’s operations to the cloud. Author Jeff Armstrong brings years of practical hands-on experience helping dozens of enterprises make this corporate change. You’ll explore real-world examples from many organizations that have made—or attempted to make—this wide-ranging transition. Once you read this guide, you’ll be better prepared to evaluate your migration objectively before, during, and after the process in order to ensure success. • Learn the benefits and drawbacks of migrating to AWS, including the risks to your business and technology • Begin the process by discovering the applications and servers in your environment • Examine the value of AWS migration when building your business case • Address your operational readiness before you migrate • Define your AWS account structure and cloud governance controls • Create your migration plan in waves of servers and applications • Refactor applications that will benefit from using more cloud native resources Cover 1 Copyright 4 Table of Contents 5 Foreword 11 Preface 15 Who This Book Is For 16 What This Book Covers 16 Conventions Used in This Book 17 O’Reilly Online Learning 18 How to Contact Us 18 Acknowledgments 19 Part I. Migration Foundation 21 Chapter 1. Why Should I Migrate to Amazon Web Services? 23 Cloud Technology Benefits 24 Scalability and Dynamic Consumption 24 Geographic Diversity 29 Easy Access to Newer Technologies 36 Availability 38 Increased Security 39 Cloud Business Benefits 43 Reduced Expenditures and Support 43 No Commitment 48 Business Agility 49 Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity 51 Decreased Vendor Lock-in 54 Change to Operational Expenditures 55 Converting Your Why into an FAQ 57 How to Build the FAQ 57 Wrapping It Up 58 Chapter 2. What Are the Risks and Their Mitigation? 61 Technology Risks 62 Security 62 Application Connectivity 74 Technology Diversity 78 Perception of Increased Technical Complexity 81 Business Risks 83 Reputation 83 Staffing and Expertise Loss 85 Contractual Obligations 87 Cost Regulation 89 Building Your Guiding Principles 91 Wrapping It Up 91 Part II. Phases of Migration 93 Chapter 3. Discovering Your Workloads 97 Discovery and Assessment Tooling 98 Server Discovery 99 Compute 103 Latest Instances 104 CPU Type 105 Relational Database Service 106 Partial Run Rate 106 Auto Scaling 107 License Model 108 Storage 110 EBS Volume Types 110 Network File System Replacement 112 Windows Server Replacement 112 Instance Store Volumes 113 Network 113 Overall Outbound Bandwidth 113 Elastic Load Balancers 114 Classic Elastic Load Balancer 115 Application Load Balancer 115 Network Load Balancer 117 Ancillary AWS Service Charges 117 Assessing Connectivity Requirements 117 Wrapping It Up 120 Chapter 4. Building Your Business Case 121 Estimating Your Timeline 122 Number of Servers 122 Number of Servers Moved per Day 122 Delay Buffer 123 Employee Vacation and Holidays 123 Putting the Equation Together 125 What Does a Business Case Look Like? 126 The Narrative 126 Introduction 126 FAQ 127 Closing 128 The Forecast 129 Trimming the Fat 131 Run Rate Modeling 134 Migration Costs 136 Run Rate Modifiers 144 Agility Savings 149 Assumptions 155 Cost Burn-Up/Burn-Down 157 Wrapping It Up 159 Chapter 5. Addressing Your Operational Readiness for AWS 161 Why Your Operations Change After Migration 162 Business Operations 163 Building a Pyramid 164 The Foundation: Executive Sponsor 164 The Base: IT Prototyping 165 Building Onto Your Base: Department Expansion 174 Finishing the Apex 175 Finance Capabilities 176 Unconstrained Resources 177 Misconfigured Pipelines 178 Cost Management 178 Lack of Chargeback/Showback 180 Wrapping It Up 181 Chapter 6. Defining Your Landing Zone and Cloud Governance 183 Landing Zone 184 Account Structure 184 Recommended Accounts 187 Landing Zone Deployment Methods 191 Cloud Governance 191 AWS Support 192 Region Management 193 Account Management 195 Access and Authorization 199 Key Management Service 201 Business Continuity 203 Wrapping It Up 205 Chapter 7. Planning Your Migration 207 Who Needs a Plan 207 Agile, Waterfall, or Combination Plan 208 Preplanning 209 Blocker Analysis 209 Technology Blockers 210 Business Blockers 212 Development Methodologies 218 Migration Tooling Selection 220 CloudEndure 220 Database Migration Service 221 DataSync 222 Third-Party Tooling 223 Building Your Plan 223 Creating a Migration Timeline 225 Planning Tooling 226 Laying Down the 90% 228 Finalizing the 90% 232 Polishing the 10% 233 Wrapping It Up 234 Chapter 8. Refactoring, Retooling, and Final Preparations 235 Refactoring 235 Potential Refactoring Targets 237 Estimating Run Rate After Refactoring 247 Building the Business Case for Refactoring 250 Final Thoughts on Refactoring 252 Retooling 252 Web Application Firewall 253 Systems Manager 253 CloudFront 254 Final Preparations 254 Application Deep Dive and Planning 255 Application Status 255 Team Bandwidth 255 Technical Details 256 Technical Migration Plan 257 Testing Process 257 Cutover Process 258 Rollback Process 259 Closing 259 Index 261 About the Author 271 Colophon 271 Bring agility, cost savings, and a competitive edge to your business by migrating your IT infrastructure to AWS. Ideal for executive leadership, senior leadership, and engineering and IT managers, this practical book examines the advantages, disadvantages, and common pitfalls possible when moving your operations to the cloud. Author Jeff Armstrong brings years of practical hands-on experience helping dozens of enterprises make this corporate change. You'll explore real-world examples of how organizations have made-or attempted to make-this wide-ranging transition. With this guide, you'll be better prepared to objectively evaluate your migration before, during, and after the process so you can ensure success. By the end of this book, you'll understand: Benefits and drawbacks of migrating to AWS Risks to your business and technology Methods for properly accessing workloads How to build a business case for this move How to create a solid migration plan How to identify low hanging fruit for refactoring