AWS Migration Strategy - Fernando A. McKenzie

The Migration Challenge

Our supply chain management system was hosted entirely on-premise with aging hardware, limited scalability, and increasing maintenance costs. The goal was clear: migrate to AWS while maintaining 99.9% uptime and improving system performance.

$180K

Annual On-Premise Costs

$108K

Projected AWS Costs

18mo

ROI Timeline

Migration Strategy: The 6 R's Framework

1. Rehost ("Lift and Shift")

Target: Non-critical applications • Timeline: Weeks 1-2

# EC2 instance configuration for rehosted applications
resource "aws_instance" "legacy_app" {
  ami           = "ami-0c02fb55956c7d316"
  instance_type = "t3.large"
  
  tags = {
    Name = "Legacy-ERP-Rehost"
    Environment = "Production"
  }
}

2. Replatform ("Lift, Tinker, and Shift")

Target: SQL Server databases • Service: Amazon RDS

-- Database migration validation query
SELECT 
    COUNT(*) as total_records,
    MAX(modified_date) as last_update,
    DB_NAME() as database_name
FROM inventory_master;

Implementation Timeline

Phase 1: Foundation (Weeks 1-2)

✅ VPC setup and network configuration
✅ Identity and access management (IAM)
✅ Direct Connect establishment
✅ Backup and disaster recovery setup

Phase 2: Data Migration (Weeks 3-4)

✅ Database migration using AWS DMS
✅ File system migration to EFS/S3
✅ Application data validation

Phase 3: Application Migration (Weeks 5-8)

✅ Rehost legacy applications
✅ Replatform databases to RDS
✅ Load balancer and auto-scaling setup

Results and Achievements

40%

Faster Response Times

99.95%

Uptime Achieved

$72K

Annual Savings

Scalability Benefits

Auto-scaling handles traffic spikes (Black Friday, peak seasons)
Database read replicas improved reporting performance by 300%
Global expansion capability (multi-region deployment ready)

Lessons Learned

What Worked Well

✅ Comprehensive 6-week planning phase
✅ Staged migration minimized risks
✅ Staff AWS certification program
✅ AWS Professional Services guidance

Challenges Overcome

⚠️ Legacy app dependencies (hardcoded IPs)
⚠️ Data consistency during migration
⚠️ User acceptance of new interfaces

Security Enhancements

Multi-Layered Security Approach

Network Security

• VPC with private subnets
• Security Groups & NACLs
• AWS WAF protection

Data Protection

• KMS encryption at rest
• CloudTrail audit logging
• GuardDuty threat detection

Cost Optimization Strategies

Reserved Instances Strategy

# Script to analyze RI opportunities
aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].[InstanceType,State.Name]' --output table

Savings Achieved:

35% savings through 3-year Reserved Instances
20% additional savings with Spot Instances for development
15% reduction through rightsizing recommendations

Future Roadmap

Planned Enhancements

🚀 Serverless Migration: Moving to Lambda and API Gateway
🤖 AI/ML Integration: Demand forecasting with SageMaker
🌍 Multi-Region Setup: Disaster recovery and global expansion
📦 Container Orchestration: EKS for microservices architecture

Essential AWS Services Used

Compute

• EC2 instances
• Lambda functions
• Auto Scaling groups

Storage

• S3 buckets
• EBS volumes
• EFS file systems

Database

• RDS SQL Server
• DynamoDB
• ElastiCache

AWS Migration Strategy: From On-Premise to Cloud-Native

Abstract