20. Migration and Transfer

AWS Migration Hub

AWS Migration Hub provides a single location to track the progress of application migrations across multiple AWS and partner solutions. Using Migration Hub allows you to choose the AWS and partner migration tools that best fit your needs, while providing visibility into the status of migrations across your portfolio of applications. Migration Hub also provides key metrics and progress for individual applications, regardless of which tools are being used to migrate them. For example, you might use AWS Database Migration Service, AWS Server Migration Service, and partner migration tools such as ATADATA ATAmotion, CloudEndure Live Migration, or RiverMeadow Server Migration Saas to migrate an application comprised of a database, virtualized web servers, and a bare metal server. Using Migration Hub, you can view the migration progress of all the resources in the application. This allows you to quickly get progress updates across all of your migrations, easily identify and troubleshoot any issues, and reduce the overall time and effort spent on your migration projects.

AWS Application Discovery Service

AWS Application Discovery Service helps enterprise customers plan migration projects by gathering information about their on-premises data centers.

Planning data center migrations can involve thousands of workloads that are often deeply interdependent. Server utilization data and dependency mapping are important early first steps in the migration process. AWS Application Discovery Service collects and presents configuration, usage, and behavior data from your servers to help you better understand your workloads.

The collected data is retained in encrypted format in an AWS Application Discovery Service data store. You can export this data as a CSV file and use it to estimate the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of running on AWS and to plan your migration to AWS. In addition, this data is also available in AWS Migration Hub, where you can migrate the discovered servers and track their progress as they get migrated to AWS.

 

AWS DMS - Database Migration Service

AWS Database Migration Service helps you migrate databases to AWS easily and securely. The source database remains fully operational during the migration, minimizing downtime to applications that rely on the database. The AWS Database Migration Service can migrate your data to and from most widely used commercial and open-source databases. The service supports homogeneous migrations such as Oracle to Oracle, as well as heterogeneous migrations between different database platforms, such as Oracle to Amazon Aurora or Microsoft SQL Server to MySQL. It also allows you to stream data to Amazon Redshift from any of the supported sources including Amazon Aurora, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SAP ASE, and SQL Server, enabling consolidation and easy analysis of data in the petabyte-scale data warehouse. AWS Database Migration Service can also be used for continuous data replication with high availability.

 

AWS SMS - Server Migration Service

AWS Server Migration Service (SMS) is an agentless service which makes it easier and faster for you to migrate thousands of on-premises workloads to AWS. AWS SMS allows you to automate, schedule, and track incremental replications of live server volumes, making it easier for you to coordinate large-scale server migrations.

AWS Snowball

AWS Snowball is a petabyte-scale data transport solution that uses secure appliances to transfer large amounts of data into and out of AWS. The use of Snowball addresses common challenges with large-scale data transfers including high network costs, long transfer times, and security concerns. Transferring data with Snowball is simple, fast, secure, and can be as little as one-fifth the cost of high-speed Internet.

With Snowball, you don’t need to write any code or purchase any hardware to transfer your data. Simply create a job in the AWS Management Console and a Snowball appliance will be automatically shipped to you. Once it arrives, attach the appliance to your local network, download and run the Snowball client to establish a connection, and then use the client to select the file directories that you want to transfer to the appliance. The client will then encrypt and transfer the files to the appliance at high speed. Once the transfer is complete and the appliance is ready to be returned, the E Ink shipping label will automatically update and you can track the job status using the Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), text messages, or directly in the console.

   Snowball uses multiple layers of security designed to protect your data including tamper-resistant enclosures, 256-bit encryption, and an industry-standard Trusted Platform Module (TPM) designed to ensure both security and full chain of custody of your data. Once the data transfer job has been processed and verified, AWS performs a software erasure of the Snowball appliance.

AWS Snowball Edge

AWS Snowball Edge is a data migration and edge computing device that comes in two options. Snowball Edge Storage Optimized provides 100 TB of capacity and 24 vCPUs and is well suited for local storage and large scale data transfer. Snowball Edge Compute Optimized provides 52 vCPUs and an optional GPU for use cases such as advanced machine learning and full motion video analysis in disconnected environments. Customers can use these two options for data collection, machine learning and processing, and storage in environments with intermittent connectivity (such as manufacturing, industrial, and transportation) or in extremely remote locations (such as military or maritime operations) before shipping it back to AWS. These devices may also be rack mounted and clustered together to build larger, temporary installations.

Snowball Edge supports specific Amazon EC2 instance types as well as AWS Lambda functions, so customers may develop and test in AWS then deploy applications on devices in remote locations to collect, pre-process, and return the data. Common use cases include data migration, data transport, image collation, IoT sensor stream capture, and machine learning.

AWS Snowmobile

AWS Snowmobile is an exabyte-scale data transfer service used to move extremely large amounts of data to AWS. You can transfer up to 100 PB per Snowmobile, a 45-foot long ruggedized shipping container, pulled by a semi-trailer truck. Snowmobile makes it easy to move massive volumes of data to the cloud, including video libraries, image repositories, or even a complete data center migration. Transferring data with Snowmobile is secure, fast, and cost effective.

After an initial assessment, a Snowmobile will be transported to your data center, and AWS personnel will configure it for you so it can be accessed as a network storage target. When your Snowmobile is on site, AWS personnel will work with your team to connect a removable, high-speed network switch from the Snowmobile to your local network. Then you can begin your high-speed data transfer from any number of sources within your data center to the Snowmobile. After your data is loaded, the Snowmobile is driven back to AWS where your data is imported into Amazon S3 or S3 Glacier.

AWS Snowmobile uses multiple layers of security designed to protect your data including dedicated security personnel, GPS tracking, alarm monitoring, 24/7 video surveillance, and an optional escort security vehicle while in transit. All data is encrypted with 256-bit encryption keys managed through AWS KMS and designed to ensure both security and full chain of custody of your data.

AWS DataSync

AWS DataSync is a data transfer service that makes it easy for you to automate moving data between on-premises storage and Amazon S3 or Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS). DataSync automatically handles many of the tasks related to data transfers that can slow down migrations or burden your IT operations, including running your own instances, handling encryption, managing scripts, network optimization, and data integrity validation. You can use DataSync to transfer data at speeds up to 10 times faster than open-source tools. DataSync uses an on-premises software agent to connect to your existing storage or file systems using the Network File System (NFS) protocol, so you don’t have write scripts or modify your applications to work with AWS APIs. You can use DataSync to copy data over AWS Direct Connect or internet links to AWS. The service enables one-time data migrations, recurring data processing workflows, and automated replication for data protection and recovery. Getting started with DataSync is easy: Deploy the DataSync agent on premises, connect it to a file system or storage array, select Amazon EFS or S3 as your AWS storage, and start moving data. You pay only for the data you copy.

 

AWS Transfer for SFTP

AWS Transfer for SFTP is a fully managed service that enables the transfer of files directly into and out of Amazon S3 using the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)—also known as Secure Shell (SSH) File Transfer Protocol. AWS helps you seamlessly migrate your file transfer workflows to AWS Transfer for SFTP—by integrating with existing authentication systems, and providing DNS routing with Amazon Route 53 —so nothing changes for your customers and partners, or their applications. With your data in S3, you can use it with AWS services for processing, analytics, machine learning, and archiving. Getting started with AWS Transfer for SFTP (AWS SFTP) is easy; there is no infrastructure to buy and setup.