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One such great journey is the story of one <\/span>Global Advertising Management Platform<\/b> client, a powerhouse in the world of <\/span>advertising<\/b> and <\/span>connected TVs<\/b>. With a state-of-the-art Connected TV Advertising Management Platform, they needed a trusted partner to migrate and manage their critical AWS applications. And that’s where our journey with them began. The key highlights of the proposed solution were:<\/span><\/p>\n 1. Re-platform and Re-architect<\/b>:<\/span> To ensure compatibility with AWS, our team re-platformed and re-architected the solution, paving the way for a seamless transition.<\/span><\/p>\n 2. Petabyte Data Migration<\/b>:<\/span> Moving petabytes of data from on-premises infrastructure to AWS requires a skilled hand.<\/span><\/p>\n 3. Active-Standby Setup<\/b>:<\/span> We designed an active-standby setup for uninterrupted service, ready to take the reins as the primary system after the cutover.<\/span><\/p>\n 4. Enhanced Monitoring and CI\/CD Setup<\/b>:<\/span> We modified their infrastructure with enhanced monitoring and a robust Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI\/CD) pipeline, ensuring performance and stability.<\/span><\/p>\n 5. Post-Go-Live Support:<\/b> Our commitment extended beyond the migration. We provided steadfast post-Go-Live support to ensure their operations ran smoothly on AWS.<\/span><\/p>\n Whether you’re an expert IT professional or just beginning to explore the world of cloud computing, this blog is designed to be your compass as you embark on the exciting journey from on-premises data centers to the boundless skies of AWS. <\/span>Welcome aboard, and let’s explore the world of AWS migration together.<\/span><\/p>\n Migrating to a cloud platform like Amazon Web Services (AWS) from a traditional data center can offer numerous benefits. Still, it’s essential to understand the limitations of data centers and the reasons why we choose to migrate to the cloud. Our client was dealing with the problems mentioned below, and in general, here are some limitations of traditional data centers that drive the need for migration to AWS:-<\/span><\/p>\n 1. Scalability<\/b>: Challenges in data centers due to the need for <\/span>upfront investments and limited physical space for expansion. AWS provides unmatched scalability. You can easily adjust your resources up or down to handle changing workloads.<\/span><\/p>\n 2. Cross Availability Zones (AZs) for High Availability<\/b>: AWS offers multiple AZs within regions. This means we can run applications with high availability and negligible downtime, even if one AZ faces issues. This becomes difficult in data centers because achieving geographic redundancy often involves high costs & complex setups.<\/span><\/p>\n 3. OS and Software Upgrades<\/b>: AWS handles the underlying infrastructure, including OS and software updates. This reduces the operational burden on your IT team, allowing them to focus on higher-value tasks. This is complex in data centers as it requires <\/span>manual updates, leading to downtime and operational overhead.<\/p>\n \u00a04.<\/strong> <\/span>Monolithic to Microservices-based Architecture<\/b>: Breaking applications into smaller, modular components enables greater flexibility, faster development, agility, and easier maintenance. It is pretty tough in data centers due to hardware constraints and legacy architecture limitations.<\/span><\/p>\n 5.<\/strong> <\/span>Enhanced Observability<\/b>: Real-time monitoring is crucial for quickly finding and addressing issues, which is challenging in a data center. On the other hand, AWS\u00a0 has a wide variety of observability tools, like Amazon <\/span>CloudWatch and <\/span>AWS X-Ray, that provide deep insights into the performance of your applications and infrastructure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 6. Security:<\/b> AWS prioritizes security. It offers robust security features and compliance certifications, making it easier for organizations to meet regulatory requirements and safeguard their data.<\/span><\/p>\n 7. Reduced Maintenance<\/strong>: Maintaining and operating a data center requires a skilled and dedicated Infrastructure team, which may be difficult to recruit and retain.\u00a0 AWS handles much of the underlying infrastructure’s maintenance and updates, freeing IT staff to focus on higher-value tasks.<\/p>\n 8. Backups & Disaster Recovery<\/b>: AWS provides comprehensive backup and disaster recovery solutions. Services like <\/span>Amazon S3, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager, and AWS Backup ensure that data is safe and recoverable during a disaster. Often complex in data centers, with manual backup processes and limited storage.<\/span><\/p>\n Before starting the actual migration, we need to understand the existing infrastructure & application stack. So that things can be planned accordingly. This also helps us identify the right services we must choose in AWS.<\/span><\/p>\n Highlights of the Existing Data Center Setup:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This big infrastructure reflects the challenges and complexities faced by organizations with substantial workloads.<\/span><\/p>\n In this step, we started by collecting information about servers, applications, and data along with their inter-dependencies. Choose the right discovery tool, like AWS Migration Hub, to get more insights into the applications & servers running in DC. A discovery tool helps you gather information about the inter-dependence of the workloads by collecting server utilization data like configuration, usage, and behavior on your on-premise data center. Plan your data and application migration based on these dependencies.<\/span><\/p>\n Step A: Discovery:<\/b> The journey begins with a thorough discovery phase, where you collect essential information about your existing infrastructure. Key activities include:<\/span><\/p>\n Step B: Migration Planning<\/b><\/p>\n Step C: Resource Mapping and Estimation:<\/b> As we advanced in the migration plan, it was crucial to map existing resources to their AWS counterparts:<\/span><\/p>\n Step D: Creating Infrastructure on AWS<\/b>:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 1. In this phase, we utilized Terraform as our Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool to launch the infrastructure on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Our objective was to replicate the existing Data Center (DC) environment on AWS, encompassing all applications, data components,\u00a0 Terraform server, Jenkins server, and various monitoring tools.<\/span><\/p>\n 2. The deployment process was synchronized with our DC releases. For each release on the DC, a corresponding release was executed on AWS. This parallel setup allowed us to maintain consistency and ensure a seamless transition between environments.<\/span><\/p>\n 3. As part of the migration strategy, we transferred data from different data components in the DC to their corresponding counterparts in AWS. This ensured that our applications could seamlessly consume data from AWS sources. Thorough testing was conducted to validate the integrity and performance of the migrated data.<\/span><\/p>\n 4. The pivotal moment in this migration was the DNS cutover, which marked the traffic transition from the DC to AWS. This cutover was executed gradually, employing the weighted routing feature provided by NS1, our domain hosting partner. Initially, we directed only 1% of the traffic to AWS. This cautious approach allowed us to monitor for any issues and provided the flexibility to roll back to the DC instantly if any anomalies were detected.<\/span><\/p>\n 5. Upon successful validation and confidence in the AWS environment, we incrementally increased the traffic allocation until reaching 100%. At this point, having confirmed the stability and reliability of our AWS infrastructure, we proceeded to shut down the data center entirely.<\/span><\/p>\n 6. This comprehensive migration strategy, encompassing infrastructure replication, data transfer, synchronized releases, and a gradual DNS cutover, ensured a smooth transition to AWS without disruptions to our services. The use of Terraform for infrastructure provisioning and NS1’s weighted routing for controlled traffic redirection played key roles in the success of this migration.<\/span><\/p>\n In the journey from data center to AWS migration, one important aspect is to maintain reliable connectivity between DC and the AWS cloud. AWS Direct Connect is the bridge that makes this seamless connection possible. Without this keeping sync of data between both DC & AWS was next to impossible.<\/span><\/p>\n AWS Direct Connect is a network service that provides dedicated and private network connections from your on-premises DC to AWS. It bypasses the public internet, ensuring a secure, low-latency, and high-bandwidth connection. We needed Direct Connect for the secure transfer of data from DC to AWS. Also, there was a requirement to do a cutover without any downtime. We had to keep real-time sync between the DC & AWS environments. A few Considerations before setting up Direct Connect:-<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\nWhy migrate from DC to AWS?<\/b><\/h2>\n
What were we dealing with?<\/b><\/h2>\n
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Navigating the AWS Migration Journey: From Discovery to Setup<\/b><\/h2>\n
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DC TO AWS Architecture Diagram\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nDirect Connect<\/b><\/h2>\n
What is AWS Direct Connect?<\/b>
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