How to Overcome Challenges to AWS Cloud Migration?
AWS Cloud Migration

Introduction

With the growing scope in cloud computing, businesses are increasingly looking out to leverage AWS Managed Cloud Services by moving their on-premise applications to AWS. However, with a number of technicalities involved with this advanced and robust cloud services platform, migration to AWS can be tricky.

Whether you are planning AWS Cloud Migration for enhancing resource usage, achieving cost efficiency, or having higher capabilities through more functional infrastructures and services, you have to go through complex and challenging processes. The bottom line is that your cloud migration project will put forth many challenges before you and you need to work them out and overcome them to achieve seamless AWS migration and leverage the best compute capabilities that will lead you to business growth and success.

Here are some of the major challenges that you come across during and after AWS Cloud Migration and tips on overcoming them without any hassles or difficulties.

AWS Cloud Migration Challenges and Solutions

With a tricky job like AWS Cloud Migration, that involves so many phases, coming across challenges is a common thing. However, if you get stuck with them, that’s where you have run into problems. Here are some easy solutions to overcome some common challenges to AWS Cloud Migration.

Challenge 1: Achieving Resilience and Availability for Compute and Networking Resources

On Demand Availability of resources and their ability to be resilient is one of the major reasons that you migrate to cloud. However, when you carry out the migration, you have to use machine instances and these instances expire thereby posing a challenge for application availability and resilience. Additionally, it’s possible that the cloud workloads lose network connectivity during migration which again comes as a challenge for achieving application resilience.

Solution: Use Reserved Instances and Establish a Direct Connection with VPC

To make sure that the application availability is not compromised when you are working with instances, it’s best to use Reserved Instances. These reserved instances ensure that machine instances remain active for longer periods of time and help you achieve seamless AWS cloud migration. However, reserved instances are not free and you shall need to be ready to pitch in some price for achieving the app availability and resilience you need over your cloud infrastructure.

Further, to achieve a stable network connectivity for application resilience, the best way is to establish a direct connection between your on premise resources and virtual private cloud. AWS also provides IPSec tunnels to ensure stable network connectivity. For maximum application resilience, you can use the IPSec tunnels and Amazon Direct Connection in tandem with each other.

Challenge 2: Application Monitoring through Log Analysis and Metric Collection

Application monitoring comes as a crucial factor in driving business growth and success. With constant application monitoring, you can get clear insights into the app performance with log analysis and metric collection. However, when you move your applications to AWS Cloud, they come over a very dynamic environment where your on-premise log analysis, metric collection, and app monitoring methodologies and techniques might not be relevant. This comes as a major challenge because you surely cannot overlook or underestimate application monitoring and with the methods becoming irrelevant, you need a new solution. 

Solution: Centralize All Your Data on Cloud Servers

To achieve seamless and ceaseless log analysis and metric collection, all you need to do is centralize your application data over the AWS cloud servers. You need to do some configurations and make sure that all your application data along with Amazon S3 buckets and other AWS services are centrally located. You can also use Amazon CloudWatch for centralization of data and efficient application monitoring. 

Challenge 3: Management of AWS Costs

You migrate to cloud to achieve cost efficiency. However, when you plan the migration, it often happens that you miss out on establishing the KPIs for your cloud applications and as a result you find yourself running behind your budgets with your AWS Bills continuously spiking up.

Solution: Establish KPIs Beforehand and Invest in AWS Cost Optimization Services

One thing that you need to understand is that AWS cloud is very dynamic and while it’s variable and pay as you go model can help bring cost efficiency, it’s equally tricky, adding up to your AWS bills as you go on with enhancing your cloud platform with more services. So, you need to work on your part to optimize the costs and leverage the cost efficiency the platform has to offer.

It’s crucial that you set clear goals and KPIs before the migration. You need to clearly establish your need for migration and create an AWS budget which clearly defines as to how much you plat to spend over cloud and for what capabilities. Secondly, you need to constantly monitor your AWS activities to make sure that everything is within budgets.

You can also invest in AWS Cost Optimization Services to have expert, experienced, and AWS Certified Professionals working on the management of AWS Costs for your cloud resources and infrastructures.

Challenge 4: Management of Security Issues

Security comes as a major concern for your business and this concern just hypes when you are migrating to AWS Cloud. Despite the robust and efficient security features over AWS Cloud, there are chances for a security breach happening during the migration of on premise resources to AWS cloud due to the existing security tools and strategies in your application not being compatible with the cloud.

Solution: Implement the AWS Security Tools, Patches, Measures, and Strategies Before Migration

You can easily add the AWS security tools, patches, measures, and strategies in the deployment stage itself. Have a look at your existing security measures and search AWS for similar or better security patches. Once you have figured them out, implement them beforehand in your applications. The only way to manage security issues and prevent security breach during an AWS Cloud Migration is to migrate the applications, resources, and IT components to AWS cloud with AWS compatible security tools and strategies.

Challenge 5: Data Migration and Storage Management

You get a vast storage over AWS. However, when you migrate to AWS Cloud, moving your on-premise data and managing the storage over AWS cloud comes as a major challenge. As you try to migrate your data, the high latency rate adversely affects the app performance and deters user experience.

Solution: Use AWS Tools like AWS Direct Connect and CloudWatch

This issue is very similar to the first challenge discussed here in above. The challenges in data migration and storage management come due to lack of connectivity between the cloud servers. The loss of connectivity is what causes the latency as well. So, you can simply overcome it by using AWS Direct Connect and establishing a direct connection between your on-premise applications and VPC to allow a free flow of data to the AWS cloud. 

Additionally, with CloudWatch, you can easily monitor the application performance, address the issues, and keep up with the user experiences. 

Conclusion

So, these are some of the major challenges you can face during and after AWS Cloud Migration and the easy solutions to overcome them.

AWS Cloud Migration is not just a choice in today’s business environment, but a need, since cloud computing is the future for businesses and a cornerstone in leading organizations to growth and success. Some challenges must not stop you from leveraging this robust, advanced, and useful technology.

If you need any help with AWS Cloud Migration, get in touch to have the most efficient AWS Cloud Migration Services at the hands of our experienced, expert, and AWS Certified Cloud Professionals.

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