Cloud is not another "data center"

A few questions asked by our prospective customers:

• Our app uses 16 web servers with 512gb RAM, 2x1TB SAS disks, Quad-core Intel XEON processors, 2 databases servers, a F5 Load Balancer, NetBackup software ... what would be the equivalent EC2 instances in AWS and how many do we need?
• Can you give me a ballpark estimate? We just want to make sure our AWS hosting costs are same (or ideally less) after we migrate to cloud.
• And speaking of costs, we checked that EC2 pricing page and did some back-of-envelop costing. We are going to be paying more?!? What gives? We thought cloud was cheap!
• How long does it take to migrate 300 apps to AWS? Can you do it by the end of June (its now Feb)? We really don't want to extend our data center contract this year!

All valid questions and I respect what the customers are trying to do. They are in a hurry to get out of the data center, they just want to find equivalent or close to equivalent servers in AWS, want to setup EC2 instances quickly and dump the applications in "the cloud". After all, the instances run the familiar Linux or Windows Operating Systems, right? Right?

At this point, I take a deep breath and start explaining the many virtues of cloud computing and why they shouldn't consider these "Lift-and-shift" or "Forklift" upgrades. During this discussion, they learn:

• A great deal about the right approach to migrating apps to cloud.
• The power of DevOps practices.
• The elastic nature of cloud computing - how they can offer better service to their customer while spending less on AWS resources.
• The cost savings because they aren't paying for hardware maintenance or annual software contracts. And when they compare cost savings they need to include these line items in addition to the data center costs. For some reason, customers tend to forget these not-so-hidden costs.
• The speed at which they can provision, configure, test and deploy applications.
• The ability to spin up applications like data warehousing systems which hitherto had been out of reach due to its cost.
• The ability to turn off dev and QA environments when not in use.
• The security models they can adopt at every layer of their application.
• The difference between horizontal and vertical scaling. The ability to make scaling decisions in real-time and create an adaptive architecture that follows along the app growth curve.
• The ability to get rid of archaic tape / VTL backup systems, the DR site that was tested in mid-90s, the $2m SAN system that only one application uses (Harry, do we still use that thing?) and the firewall appliance that's slightly younger than The Rolling Stones!

Jokes aside, as you can see, there is a lot that goes or should go into a successful cloud migration planning. Once you put in the effort and hard-work during the planning stages, the rest of the migrations should become easier.

Having a mentor or guide is, as always, the best way to achieve your cloud migration objectives. If you like discuss your cloud migration plans or would like us to conduct a high-level cloud strategy workshop, feel free to contact me at madhu.joshi@ttsiglobal.com.