AWS Cloud Practitioner Guide: Domain 1 - Cloud Concepts (Part 2)

Today's topic is about AWS cloud migration: strategies, benefits, and tools.

Topics Covered

• Understand the benefits of and strategies for migration to the AWS Cloud

Understand the benefits of and strategies for migration to the AWS Cloud

AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)

AWS offers the Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF), a professional team that provides guidance for a smooth migration process.

The AWS CAF organizes guidance into six areas focused ( called Perspectives) on the different types of people that need to involve for migration (which is kinda obvious migration an application is not an one man role).

1. Business Perspective

   • Ensures that IT aligns with business needs and that IT investments link to key business results.

   • Use the Business Perspective to create a strong business case for cloud adoption and prioritize cloud adoption initiatives. Ensure that your business strategies and goals align with your IT strategies and goals.

   • Common roles: Business managers, Finance managers, Budget owners, Finance managers.

2. People Perspective

   • Supports development of an organization-wide change management strategy for successful cloud adoption.

   • Use when to evaluate organizational structures and roles, new skill and process requirements, and identify gaps. This helps prioritize training, staffing, and organizational changes.

   • Common roles: HR, staffing, People manager

3. Governance Perspective

   • Focuses on the skills and processes to align IT strategy with business strategy. This ensures that you maximize the business value and minimize risks.

   • Use when to understand how to update the staff skills and processes necessary to ensure business governance in the cloud. Manage and measure cloud investments to evaluate business outcomes.

   • Common roles: Chief Information Officer (CIO), Program managers, Enterprise architects, Business analysts, Portfolio managers.

4. Platform Perspective

   • includes principles and patterns for implementing new solutions on the cloud, and migrating on-premises workloads to the cloud.

   • Use a variety of architectural models to understand and communicate the structure of IT systems and their relationships.

   • Common roles: Chief Technology Officer (CTO), IT managers, Solutions architects.

5. Security Perspective

   • Ensures that the organization meets security objectives for visibility, auditability, control, and agility.

   • Use when to structure the selection and implementation of security controls that meet the organization’s needs.

   • Common roles: Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), IT security managers, IT security analysts.

6. Operations Perspective

   • Helps you to enable, run, use, operate, and recover IT workloads to the level agreed upon with your business stakeholders.

   • Define how day-to-day, quarter-to-quarter, and year-to-year business is conducted. Align with and support the operations of the business. The AWS CAF helps these stakeholders define current operating procedures and identify the process changes and training needed to implement successful cloud adoption.

   • Common roles: IT operations managers, IT support managers.

In general, the Business, People, and Governance Perspectives focus on business capabilities, whereas the Platform, Security, and Operations Perspectives focus on technical capabilities.

What I understand in this that doing Migration is not man job you need AWS CAF professional guidance to do so for smooth migration. I kinda don’t know about this thing since never done before. Here the resources that i come across while explore:

• Skill Builder - Cloud Essentials

• Whitepaper - AWS CAF

• Youtube - Cloud Adoption: It Takes a Village

6 Strategies for migration to the AWS Cloud

Every application, or application groups, if they're tightly coupled, will have six possible options when it comes to your enterprise migration. They called this the six R’s where you decide which option among the six R's is the best fit based on time, cost, priority, criticality.

1. Rehosting

   • also known as “lift-and-shift” involves moving applications without changes.

   • In the scenario of a large legacy migration, in which the company is looking to implement its migration and scale quickly to meet a business case, the majority of applications are rehosted.

2. Replatforming

   • also known as “lift, tinker, and shift”, involves making a few cloud optimizations to realize a tangible benefit.

   • Optimization is achieved without changing the core architecture of the application.

3. Refactoring - typically using cloud-native features

   • also known as re-architecting involves reimagining how an application is architected and developed by using cloud-native features.

   • Refactoring is driven by a strong business need to add features, scale, or performance that would otherwise be difficult to achieve in the application’s existing environment.

4. Repurchasing - Moving to a different product.

   • involves moving from a traditional license to a software-as-a-service model.

   • For example, a business might choose to implement the repurchasing strategy by migrating from a customer relationship management (CRM) system to Salesforce.com.

5. Retaining - Usually this means “revisit” or do nothing (for now)

   • consists of keeping applications that are critical for the business in the source environment.

   • This might include applications that require major refactoring before they can be migrated, or, work that can be postponed until a later time.

6. Retiring - Get rid of

   • is the process of removing applications that are no longer needed.

Well this 6 R’s need once migration reached discovery phase I honestly have no idea about this topics but still good to know about AWS CAF give’s benefits of smooth migration process and 6 R’s strategies for migration. Here the resource of 6 R’s:

• AWS Cloud Enterprise Strategy Blog

• Skill Builder - Cloud Essentials

Identifying appropriate migration strategies

Now let’s talk about services and tools that helps in migration.

1. AWS Application Discovery Service - helps you plan your migration to the AWS cloud by collecting usage and configuration data about your on-premises servers and databases.

2. AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) is a highly automated lift-and-shift (rehost) solution that simplifies, expedites, and reduces the cost of migrating applications to AWS.

3. AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) is a cloud service that makes it possible to migrate relational databases, data warehouses, NoSQL databases, and other types of data stores but NOT existing Database.

4. AWS Migration Hub provides a single place to discover your existing servers, plan migrations, and track the status of each application migration.

5. AWS Schema Conversion Tool (AWS SCT) to convert your existing database schema from one database engine to another. Can convert relational OLTP schema, or data warehouse schema.

6. The AWS Snow Family is a collection of physical devices that help to physically transport up to exabytes of data into and out of AWS.

   For exam knowledge I bring all that given but since Nov 12, 2024 few snow Family services put down or replaced with never version, read the blog.

   • AWS Snowcone

     • is a small, rugged, and secure edge computing and data transfer device.
     • It features 2 CPUs, 4 GB of memory, and up to 14 TB of usable storage.
     • AWS already stop offering AWS Snowcone.

   • AWS Snowball - offers two types of devices

     • Accelerate moving offline data or remote storage to the cloud.

     • Discontinued Services

       1. Snowball Edge Storage Optimized (80TB, HDD)
       2. Snowball Edge Compute Optimized (52 vCPUs, 7.68TB SSD)
       3. Snowball Edge Compute Optimized with GPU (Tesla V100, 42 vCPUs, 7.68TB SSD)

     • Replacements (Latest-Generation Snowball Edge Models)

       1. Snowball Edge Storage Optimized (210TB, NVMe) → Replaces 80TB model
       2. Snowball Edge Compute Optimized (104 vCPUs, 28TB NVMe SSD) → Replaces Compute Optimized (52 vCPUs & GPU models)

   • AWS Snowmobile

     • is an exabyte-scale data transfer service used to move large amounts of data to AWS.
     • You can transfer up to 100 petabytes of data per Snowmobile, a 45-foot long ruggedized shipping container, pulled by a semi trailer truck.

     • No Changes from AWS.

       AWS Snowcone has been discontinued, and AWS Snowball models have been replaced with higher-capacity NVMe versions. Snowmobile remains unchanged.

7. AWS Transfer Family is a secure transfer service that enables you to transfer files into and out of AWS storage services.

I only covered those that in-scope on AWS CCP exam guide if anyone is curious about other services check on AWS Decision guide - Choosing AWS migration services and tools.

Key Takeaways

1. AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)

   • AWS CAF provides structured guidance for cloud migration.
   • It has six perspectives (Business, People, Governance, Platform, Security, and Operations).
   • Migration is a team effort, not a one-person job.

2. Six R’s of Cloud Migration

   • Rehost (Lift-and-Shift) – Move applications as they are.
   • Replatform (Lift, Tinker, and Shift) – Make small optimizations.
   • Refactor (Re-architect) – Fully redesign for cloud-native benefits.
   • Repurchase – Switch to a new cloud-based solution (e.g., SaaS).
   • Retain – Keep some applications on-prem for now.
   • Retire – Decommission unused applications.

3. Migration services and tools

   • AWS Application Discovery Service – Collects data on on-premises servers to plan migration.
   • AWS Migration Hub – Centralized tracking for migration progress.
   • AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) – Automates lift-and-shift migrations.
   • AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) – Moves relational and NoSQL databases.
   • AWS Schema Conversion Tool (SCT) – Converts database schema between engines.
   • AWS Snow Family – Physical devices for large-scale data transfer.
     • Snowcone (Discontinued).
     • Snowball (New NVMe-based models replace older versions).
     • Snowmobile (Remains unchanged for exabyte-scale migrations).
   • AWS Transfer Family – Secure file transfers into and out of AWS.

4. Final Thoughts

   • Migration is not one-size-fits-all—choose the right strategy based on business needs.
   • AWS provides many tools to simplify and automate migration.
   • Understanding CAF and the Six R’s helps in making the right migration decisions.

Challenges and Solutions

As I explored AWS migration, I wondered—if AWS provides so many services for migration, what challenges might still arise? Here’s what I found. I’ll keep this for now; who knows when it might come in handy. (This section was generated with AI.)

Challenges in Hands-on Migration

• Complexity in Migration Planning

  • Understanding dependencies between applications.
  • Identifying the right migration strategy (Six R’s) for each workload.

• Data Transfer & Latency Issues

  • Large-scale data migration can be slow and costly.
  • Bandwidth limitations may cause delays.
  • AWS Snow Family helps, but physical transport has its own challenges.

• Security & Compliance Concerns

  • Ensuring data encryption during transit and at rest.
  • Meeting regulatory requirements (GDPR, HIPAA, etc.).
  • Managing identity & access across cloud and on-prem environments.

• Downtime & Business Continuity Risks

  • Some applications require zero-downtime migration.
  • Unexpected service disruptions can impact business operations.

• Skill Gaps & Training Needs

  • Teams may lack AWS expertise for migration.
  • Need for training on AWS CAF, Migration Hub, and AWS services.

• Cost Management & Optimization

  • Unexpected cloud costs due to poor planning.
  • Over-provisioning compute/storage leads to higher bills.
  • AWS Cost Management tools can help track and optimize spending.

• Application Compatibility Issues

  • Legacy applications may not be cloud-ready.
  • Some software may need refactoring or repurchasing.

• Post-Migration Performance Optimization

  • Fine-tuning workloads for cost efficiency and performance.
  • Managing ongoing monitoring & scaling with AWS tools.

How to Overcome These Challenges?

✅ Plan thoroughly – Use AWS CAF & Migration Hub.
✅ Optimize data transfer – Leverage AWS Snow Family if needed.
✅ Implement security best practices – Encrypt data, use IAM policies.
✅ Minimize downtime risks – Use blue-green deployment strategies.
✅ Upskill teams – Invest in AWS training & certification.
✅ Monitor & optimize costs – Use AWS Cost Explorer & Trusted Advisor.

Hands-on Practice

For now, I'll leave it as is since there's still more to learn. However, I did come across a guide that offers hands-on practice. If you're curious, check out the 'Choosing AWS migration services and tools: AWS Decision Guide' and look for the 'Choosing AWS migration services and tools' or 'Use' section.

What Next

Okay, that’s it for Part 2! See you in the next blog, AWS Cloud Practitioner Guide: Domain 1 - Cloud Concepts (Part 3), where I'll cover the final part of Domain 1—'Understanding Concepts of Cloud Economics'.