In our second blog about the phases of AWS Migration, we discuss the mobilize phase, walking you through the eight core areas to remember during this process.
In our first blog about AWS migration, we discussed how to get started on the huge lift that is migrating your business to the cloud. The assess phase plays a crucial role in preparing for your migration. In this blog, we’ll look at the second phase, the mobilize phase, which is the next major step in your AWS migration journey.
What is the AWS Migration Mobilize Phase?
The "mobilize" phase in an AWS migration aims to establish a functional base for the migration process and address any deficiencies identified in the assess phase. The mobilize phase streamlines the migration process by offering clear guidance on migration strategies. Per AWS best practices, you will want to prepare a scalable framework that will work for your migration. Generally, this stage can take around two to six months, depending on your industry and regulations. As we mentioned in the first blog, we highly recommend using a vendor to make sure your migration is a success. The mobilize phase focuses on eight core areas:- Discovery and Planning – Details discovery, migration strategy and wave planning
- Security and Compliance – Ensures architectural design meets security and compliance requirements
- Operating Model – Details how resources will run in AWS
- Landing Zone – Establishes connectivity, governance and security
- Skills and CCoE – Sets up a cloud center of excellence (CCoE) and identifies any training requirements
- Business Case – Creates a detailed business case using additional business points collected during the mobilize phase
- Migration Governance – Determines who is responsible for what
- Applications Migrated – Identifies pilot migrations to test architecture and provides hands-on experience of the migration process.
Eight Areas of the AWS Migration Mobilize Phase
Discovery and Planning
During this phase, your goal is to perform a very detailed discovery. This discovery includes identifying data sources, application level information, and establishing a migration strategy. You will uncover detailed performance metrics that will assist with allocating and right-sizing target resources on AWS. Also, service naming and tagging will help you identify patterns and group servers and applications.Data Sources
Although you and your partner would have already completed some data capture in the assess phase, you now need more detailed information. This includes dependencies, server network activity and application information. You can then use this information to create the migration waves. AWS offers several services to help with this planning, including AWS Application Discovery Services (ADS), an agent-based discovery tool.Application-Level Information
Discovery tools cannot collect all the information required for your migration planning (criticality of your application, business units, service level requirements). You can collect this extra detail using the AWS Migration Portfolio Assessment (MPA) tool. MPA allows users to create a questionnaire to capture all the relevant information. Once designed, it sends a link to the application owner, and they can provide the requested information.Migration Strategy
The reason you want to collect this information is to help determine the migration strategy for each application. Gartner originally introduced the 7Rs concept, which lists seven cloud migration options: refactor, re-platform, repurchase, rehost, relocate, retain and retire.Security and Compliance
AWS follows the shared responsibility model, meaning the customer is responsible for what is in the cloud, and AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud. When looking at security and compliance, you must identify the organization’s needs. You need this step to ensure you correctly configure the landing zone and security controls. Some key areas of security are:- Identity and access management – How will you manage all-around access of resources, who can access what and as well as authentication?
- Logging and monitoring – What will you identify as security logging requirements, and how will you monitor these resources?
- Infrastructure protection – How will the company protect infrastructure, firewalls and networks?
- Data protection – What will you identify as infrastructure requirements, and how will you determine management keys?
- Security Incident Response – How will the company react and respond to a security incident?
Operating Model
During this step, you need to review all the existing operating models and make updates to support the would-be environment in the cloud. The goal is to provide best-practices guidance and enhance the operational model both in hybrid mode and when in AWS. These AWS migration best-practice guidelines would include:- Design guides for operational areas
- Operational playbooks for applications running in AWS
- Identified and trained operational support teams that will interact with the cloud environments.