Cloud migration in general is a procedure to move digital assets such as data, applications, and IT resources successfully to the cloud. Earlier what used to happen was applications and IT services were conducted on self-managed IT infrastructure, so here managing data was most of the time on-premises.
Now the problem arises when organizations have tons and tons of databases, applications, and system software running on-site.
Everything suddenly goes on a hang mode and you are doomed! After a long time, with the evolution of the software development landscape, the concept of cloud migration came into existence. So what is cloud migration?
Cloud migration is shifting all your important workloads from on-premises data to the cloud’s provider infrastructure.
Now all this is supposed to be conducted in a planned, nondisruptive manner, and for that, you require a proper cloud migration strategy where workloads are being prioritized, proper planning and plotting are done, and rigorous testing is done so that all the operations can be easily moved to the cloud.
Now during the early adoption of cloud migration, some organizations preferred running only new applications in the cloud whereas older systems run on on-premise infrastructure. Fortunately, this is no longer supposed to be the case anymore.
Slowly and steadily, people started having a keen interest in migration procedures and gaining a plethora of benefits as you will come across lots of data migration tools and elearning platforms that can ease the process of migration apart from that:
- Cost Efficiency – One of the finest yet most amazing advantages of cloud migration services is that they are cost-efficient. Organizations that shift to the public cloud are most likely to reduce operational costs since they no longer have to bear the headache of maintaining physical data centers, such as hardware procurement, power, and cooling costs.
Above all, migration enables employees to save ample time from conducting unnecessary data center-related admin tasks and allows them to focus on business development and other relevant core competencies significantly such as AWS data management.
These savings are pretty significant. Not to mention that the cloud provider fees are much lower than the overall cost of running a local data center.
In simple words, here you just have to pay for the cloud resources you use, so it becomes easy to scale up and down depending on the ever-changing business demands. I would advise you to start checking the pricing models and significant free tiers right away.
- Scalability – Another major advantage to consider is that the cloud ensures full-fledged scalability. Businesses these days can easily take care of all their IT resources just by fluctuating workloads. And do you know what it doesn’t cost an arm or a leg? Cloud migration offers a dynamic amount of scalability which means whatever the app is, it is bound to perform optimally during peak times. In simple words, resources aren’t wasted especially when not in use.
- Security – Some of the most renowned cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) tend to invest heavily in security, do you know why? Well, the obvious reason is that security breaches keep on happening now and then so it is very important to have a system that features robust security measures such as encryption, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and regular security audits. You can also try incorporating different backups and disaster recovery mechanisms to take care of your digital assets.
Fortunately, cloud providers take full responsibility for protection so fear of security breaches is no more.
- Performance – Another benefit that shouldn’t be ignored is performance. Now when you migrate your business to the cloud, you are bound to gain benefits from the most advanced server and network technology. So faster processing speeds and optimal application performance are some of the most obvious perks here. Cloud migration can directly benefit by enhancing user experience, boosting productivity, and offering a sure-shot competitive edge.
So now you know why cloud migration is so much hype. Now without much delay, I would like you to take a look at some of the top questions and answers asked in an interview when migrating to AWS.
Migrating to AWS Interview Questions and Answers
1. What is AWS Migration? Do you think it is relevant today?
AWS Migration mainly refers to a process of moving all the existing infrastructure applications and data to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Now this step is extremely important since cloud migration offers many advantages such as enhanced performance, great security, reliability, cost-effective measures, and a lot more.
2. Can you define different types of migration strategies in AWS?
Well, there are so many migration strategies to consider when moving applications to the cloud such as Retire, Retain, Rehost, Relocate, Repurchase, Replatform, Refactor or re-architect, and so on.
- Retire – If you think there is no business value in retaining the app or eliminating the cost of maintenance, reducing security risks, then you can decommission or archive.
- Retain – Retain should be considered when you want to maintain security and compliance, a detailed assessment, dependencies, no business value, the app requires careful assessment and planning, and above all keep zombie or idle applications in your source environment.
- Rehost – This is a lift and shift strategy. It is possible to migrate machines literally. You no longer have to worry about source platforms, physical, virtual, or another cloud, anything is possible to migrate to AWS. Also, here you don’t have to worry about compatibility. Apart from that,
- Performance disruption
- Long cutover windows
- Long-distance data replications
- Relocate – As the name implies, transferring a large number of servers to a different virtual private cloud (VPC), AWS Region, or AWS account is possible. Relocate is possible to transfer an Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) DB instance to another VPC or AWS account. And here you are not required to purchase new hardware, rewrite applications, or modify existing operations.
- Repurchase – This strategy is drop and shop, choose an app that offers more business value than the on-premises one where you don’t have to maintain a specific infrastructure or you can pay-as-you-go pricing models. So here you have two options
- Move from traditional licence to SaaS
- Version upgrades or third-party equivalents
- Replace a custom application
- Replatform – This one means to lift, tinker, and shift or lift and reshape. Choose this strategy when you need to introduce some level of optimization in order to operate the application efficiently, reduce costs, or take advantage of cloud capabilities. For example, platform a Microsoft SQL Server database to Amazon RDS for SQL Server.
- Refactor – Here the architecture can be modified with the assistance of cloud-native features to enhance agility, performance, and scalability.
3. How to conduct an AWS migration project?
Well, planning an AWS migration project is easy, you are required to perform a thorough assessment of the existing infrastructure and applications, define migration goals, prioritize significant workloads, estimate costs, and above all seek assistance from a relevant company that will assist you in developing a detailed migration plan.
4. Is it possible to optimize costs during AWS migration?
Yes, of course, the cost can be seamlessly optimized during AWS migration. For that, it is advisable to make use of different cost management tools, choose appropriate EC2 instance types, leverage AWS Reserved Instances, and implement cost monitoring and optimization strategies.
5. How to ensure minimal downtime?
Minimal downtime is possible all thanks to different techniques such as blue-green deployments, leveraging AWS services like AWS Server Migration Service (SMS), and carefully planning the cutover process.
6. Name any tools and services used for database migration in AWS.
Fortunately, AWS offers a wide range of tools and services for database migration such as Database Migration Service (DMS), AWS Schema Conversion Tool (SCT), and AWS Database Discovery Service (DDS).
7. Can you assure application compatibility?
Yes, it is possible to do so. All it requires is a thorough assessment of application dependencies where the app is tested in an AWS-like environment and try making necessary modifications to take care of all the compatibility issues.
8. How can you monitor and optimize the performance of migrated applications in AWS?
Now first of all monitoring and optimizing the performance of migrated applications in AWS is a doable job with a little bit of assistance from AWS CloudWatch.
Here you get to take a close look at resource utilization, performance metrics, and logs. Further performance can be improved by optimizing the application code and infrastructure configuration.
9. How do you ensure data integrity and consistency after an AWS migration?
This is an extremely important point, all it needs is thorough testing to keep the data integrity and consistency intact. Also, it is advisable to perform frequent data verification checks at regular intervals.
10. How do you ensure a smooth transition and user acceptance after an AWS migration?
Well, it is very important to have a smooth transition and user acceptance especially after the AWS migration is fulfilled. This can be done via proper user training and support, effective change management, establishing clear communication channels and so more.
Conclusion
From Fortune 500 companies to normal mid-level enterprises, AWS cloud migration has become the need of the hour for any complete software engineer. No wonder the concept is supposed to dominate the market share to a great extent. I hope you did find the post insightful and all the aforementioned questions are often asked during the interview so go and get it! Good luck!
