Cloud Operations

AWS has revolutionized the way businesses approach IT infrastructure. With a vast array of services spanning computing, storage, databases, machine learning, analytics, and more, AWS provides the tools and resources needed to build, deploy, and scale applications with unprecedented flexibility and agility. However, the sheer scope of AWS offerings can be overwhelming, and organizations often struggle to maximize the value of their investments.

Challenges of AWS Management

‍1. Complexity: The sheer number of AWS services and the complexity of their configurations can be overwhelming.

2. Cost Optimization: Controlling AWS spending without sacrificing performance is a delicate balancing act.

3. Security and Compliance: Ensuring the security and compliance of AWS workloads requires constant vigilance and expertise.

‍4. DevOps and Automation: Implementing DevOps practices and automation is critical for rapid development and deployment but can be complex to set up.

Tailored Solutions for Your AWS Journey

Ankercloud's AWS CloudOps Solutions are designed to address these challenges comprehensively, allowing businesses to focus on innovation and growth while we handle the intricacies of AWS management. Here's how we elevate your cloud operations:

Cloud Governance – Our AWS experts will collaborate closely with your team to design, deploy, and manage a cloud infrastructure tailored to your unique business requirements. We focus on scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness, ensuring your infrastructure evolves with your business.

Cost Optimization- Cost management is a top priority for businesses operating on AWS. We conducts in-depth cost assessments, identifies cost-saving opportunities, and implements strategies to optimize your AWS expenses while maintaining peak performance.

Robust Security and Compliance - Security is paramount in the cloud. We implement the latest AWS security best practices, conduct regular security audits, and ensure your AWS environment complies with industry standards and regulations. Your data's safety is our top priority. Additionally, we enhance your web application security using AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF), safeguarding against common web exploits and attacks such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and more. With AWS WAF, we establish and enforce stringent access controls, shielding your applications from unauthorized access and vulnerabilities.‍

Proactive Monitoring and Alerting - Downtime is costly and disruptive. Our AWS CloudOps Solutions include 24/7 monitoring and alerting, allowing us to identify and address issues before they impact your operations. Our proactive approach keeps your AWS infrastructure running smoothly, ensuring your business remains resilient and responsive.

Operations Management – Ankercloud 24x7 Managed Service takes care of the management of customer infrastructure and workloads which includes the monitoring and maintenance of the infrastructure allowing customer to focus on their business operations.

Join the growing list of businesses that trust Ankercloud's AWS CloudOps Solutions to optimize their AWS infrastructure, boost efficiency, and enhance security. Let's embark on a cloud journey together. Contact us today to learn more about how we can transform your AWS environment into a powerful asset for your business.

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Are you ready for the Cloud?

A successful cloud migration begins with a detailed analysis of goals, business plans, and resources currently used, with the initial purpose of gaining a clear understanding of the starting point, discovering the gaps to be filled, and developing a strong business case. It is in this exact context that our Accelerated Cloud Exploration (ACE) program comes into play: as an Advanced AWS Consulting Partner, a team of specialists from Ankercloud guides our customers through a complete assessment phase covering all these points to make a well-informed decision on whether and how to move to the cloud.

Ankercloud’s expertise is combined with a variety of professional tools offered by AWS, starting with the Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA), which represents the first hands-on activity to embark on the Cloud Exploration journey. A customized roadmap is built to define the successive actions to be taken.

What is the MRA tool?

The Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA) tool is used to assess the customer’s strengths and weaknesses following the 6 areas of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework: Business, Platform, People, Governance, Operations, and Security. It evaluates existing skills and set-up on a scale from 1 to 5, highlighting the readiness level and giving an overall score for each main focus area and related subtopics.

How does it work?

The process requires you to answer 80+ questions and is typically fulfilled in a 1-day workshop, but it can also take several days. Due to the difficulty of the topics and the depth of the analysis, it is important that the customer’s team and the experts from Ankercloud work well together to finish the tasks.

What is the outcome?

After data collection, Ankercloud generates a full report that includes charts, scores, and data visualization. Together with the customer, we can look at the results and determine which areas need more work and which are already ready to move to the cloud.

But the MRA workshop is just the beginning.

To finish the business case, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) must be calculated, and it may be necessary to evaluate how the on-premise resources are set up.

The AWS Migration Evaluator and Migration Portfolio Assessment are suitable tools to fulfill the missing analysis and guide our customers towards the completion of the ACE Program, ready for a PoC implementation. Based on the MRA results as well as the outcome of the other components of ACE, our customers have full visibility of the strengths and weaknesses of a potential migration to the cloud and can make an informed and confident decision if and how to migrate.

Further learning…

Are you willing to discover what the AWS cloud can offer but unsure what the best way to start is? Want to know more about MRA and the other tools available to complete the assessment phase, as well as our Accelerated Cloud Exploration program? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us, we will be more than happy to solve all your doubts and give support for getting started with AWS cloud technologies.

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Hello, When starting the process of migrating servers from Digital Ocean to AWS. I choose AWS Application Migration Service after carefully reading the documentation to decide which AWS service to use for the migration.

Why I Selected the AWS Application Migration Service:

AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) is a highly automated lift-and-shift (rehost) solution that simplifies, expedites, and reduces the cost of migrating applications to AWS. It enables companies to lift-and-shift a large number of physical, virtual, or cloud servers without compatibility issues, performance disruption, or long cutover windows.

As per the Requirement of customers they want to clone their complete server as it is on AWS, so as MGN gives us Lift and Shift of everything we have on our servers I decide to go with it.

Moving to the Steps of Migration:

The Servers which are in the digital ocean they all are in the public subnet, so I have asked for the access of all the servers which I want to migrate. (If you don’t have access of source servers then share the replication agent download and installation link with your client)

1. Creating User:

I. As the First step you have to Login to AWS console-> go to the IAM-> create new user: MGNUSER->and add the permissions -> AWSApplicationMigrationAgentPolicy -> click create user

II. Then generate Access keys and Secret keys for the MGNUSER (we need these keys for creating source server in MGN.

2. Download and Installation of Replication Agent on Source

I. Navigate to Application Migration Console-> Go to Source Server-> Add server-> Select your OS type-> Enter Your MGNUSER Access key and Secret Key.

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I. Then copy the replication download link and run it on source server.

II. Once downloaded, copy the replication installation agent link and run it on your source server.

III. It will take some time for the command line to appear on your source server (depending typically on network bandwidth and network connectivity between Digital Ocean and AWS). Keep your terminal open throughout this operation.

IV. Once the Process completed on your source server you can close your source terminal.

V. Note: The AWS Application Migration service did not support Ubuntu version 21

1. Configuration on AWS

I. Go to Application Migration Service in AWS It is possible to observe that the new server has been built and is currently synchronizing (again, it is not required that you remain logged into your AWS account and continuously monitor the developments).

II. The continuing Synchronous procedure will not be impacted by your network connectivity loss or logging out of your AWS account.

III. The Synchronous process will be completed and marked as being ready for testing (the Synchronous process takes hours to complete depending on the size of data on source).

2. Launch Test Instance

I. Select your server-> go to the Launch Configuration-> mention the Network Configurations-> size of instance-> its VPC-> subnet

II. Click on Launch Test instance

III. It will create the job Id which will track the complete process.

IV. Once the EC2 instance launched successfully you can see that instance in your console.

V. Test the Instance. If everything is good then mark it as revert for cutover.

Note: During the process the changes which you are performing on source that is digital ocean server will not automatically add to the Launched EC2 instance.

Example:

If I have 10 files on sources at the time of launching the instance and the instance launched in AWS.

Now that I’ve made changes on the digital ocean server, I’ve added one file there, making a total of 11 files.

But that will not reflect on my EC2 for that updated changes we have to Revert the instance back to testing and then Launch the test instance using same Launch template.

VI. Once test done Mark it as Ready for cutover.

1. Launch Cutover instance

Points to be noted before cutover:

Make a plan for cutover it should be in non-business hours

Don’t shutdown your source server before finalizing the cutover.

I. Select the Launch Template configuration, do the configurations.

II. Select Launch cutover Instances

III. The cutover job will be created, See the job progress

IV. Once the Instance Successfully Launched.

Note: It will Terminate your already Launched test instance and will Launch new Instance.

V. Click on Finalize Cutover

VI. Now you successfully migrated the Server from Digital Ocean to AWS

VII. Terminate your Digital Ocean server and start using the newly Migrated AWS Server.

Conclusion

If you have any questions about moving a server from Digital Ocean to AWS, I hope this blog will help. Check your OS version before moving, keep tabs on source updates before cutting the switch, choose a schedule for the switch, and follow the instructions provided. I hope this will save you time, money, and risk.

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