Best practices for VMware to AWS migration

I am assuming that you want to "lift and shift" your virtual machines. This is not necessarily the only approach - you could re-factor your application using native AWS services, for example.

If you just want to migrate the VMs "as is" with minimal reconfiguration, have a look at this post about AWS Application Migration Service (MGN): https://aws.amazon.com/application-migration-service/when-to-choose-aws-mgn/

MGN uses an Agent installed on each VM to capture it's configuration and "lift-and-shift" it to become an EC2 instance in AWS. The process is outlined here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/mgn/latest/ug/migration-workflow-gs.html Your VMs would then become AWS EC2 instances.

However, if you would prefer to continue to use your existing VMware skills, and not migrate to EC2, have a look at VMware Cloud on AWS: https://www.vmware.com/products/vmc-on-aws.html This is a VMware product that enables you to extend your on-premises vSphere environments to a VMware Software-Defined Data Center running on Amazon EC2 elastic, bare metal infrastructure, fully integrated with AWS.

Hope this helps

Best Practices for VMware to AWS Migration

1. Comprehensive Assessment Workload Analysis: Identify workloads suitable for migration, considering factors like dependency, criticality, and cost-benefit. Dependency Mapping: Understand interconnections between applications and infrastructure to avoid migration issues. Cost-Benefit Analysis: Evaluate the potential cost savings in AWS including Microsoft license agreements 2.** Migration Strategy** Identify the migration strategy works for you i.e. lift and shift or hybrid approach
2. Tool Selection AWS Migration Services: Utilize AWS tools like AWS Application Migration Service (AWS SMS), AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS), for efficient migration.
3. Network Planning Plan your network which includes NSX and if you are using micro-segmentation at on-prem, how you are going to map that in AWS after migration.
4. Storage Planning Plan your storage from on-prem like VSAN, FC, FCoE or NFS to AWS storage services i.e mapping of block -> block storage and file storage Identify content like unstructured storage and move to AWS s3. Identify file storage and move it to relevant file systems like EFS or FSX.
5. Cost Optimization Rightsizing Instances: Select appropriate EC2 instance types based on workload requirements. Reserved Instances: Consider purchasing Reserved Instances for cost savings. Cost Monitoring: Use AWS Cost Explorer to track and optimize spending. Use compute Optimizer after migration to right size instances
6. Continuous Optimization Monitoring and Logging: Utilize AWS CloudWatch for monitoring and logging. Performance Optimization: Continuously analyze performance and identify optimization opportunities using Compute Optimizer Cost Optimization: Regularly review and adjust cost-saving measures.