In this episode, we look at the migration group of services. We have already discussed a few of these and will focus on the ones that are new to us. These services are the Migration Hub, Application Discovery, and the Application Migration Service.
We looked at the database migration service and the “snow” family of services in prior episodes. These make it easy to move a database to the cloud or large amounts of data. The “snow” (ball, edge, mobile) services make it easy to move data without using all your network pipe for hours, days, or weeks.
Migration Hub – Your Dashboard
The number of us that will need to migrate a large number of servers out to the cloud is small. Even when this is required, it is not something we will use daily. The exception to his assumption is a hybrid environment. The nice thing about Amazon services is that they cover even these edge cases. If you do happen to need to do a massive migration, then you will be happy to be able to centrally manage them. That is what the hub provides you. The processes in progress and those that are planned can all be viewed from one point. You will be happy to use this over a bunch of scripts.
Environmental Smarts
It is always best to understand your environment. This knowledge includes both the size of your systems and utilization of them. The good news is that Amazon has discovery tools to help you if you are not sure of your current situation. These allow for a migration to be created manually with the details you know or to use their tools for that information. Who knows, it might even teach you a few things about your environment.
Migrating data to the cloud is not the most common challenge in using AWS. Let’s face it, this is usually a one and done type of project. However, these tools make the whole process easier to manage and reduces errors.
