Moving to AWS can feel confusing, but this guide makes it simple. Here, you’ll learn the key steps to plan your migration, choose the right strategy, move your workloads, and stabilise everything smoothly. Technik Go can also help you with full migration planning and execution. Contact us anytime for a detailed estimate.
Quick Plain Overview: Why Plan Your AWS Move
Planning your AWS migration is just like planning a house move. First, you pack your items, then you load them in the truck, and finally you set up everything in your new home. If you rush the process, things break, you lose items, or you end up paying extra. The same happens when you migrate to AWS without a clear cloud migration plan. Good planning helps you avoid downtime, control your budget, reduce surprises, and get a faster return on investment. In simple words: the better you plan, the smoother and cheaper your AWS move becomes.
Migration Approaches Explained
Rehost (Lift-and-Shift)
Rehosting means moving your application to AWS exactly as it is-no code changes, no redesign. You simply take your servers and run them on Amazon EC2. This is the fastest and cheapest starting point if you’re short on time or need a quick exit from old hardware. Example: shifting a company’s internal CRM from on-prem to EC2 within days to stop server failures.
Replatform
Replatforming makes small, smart upgrades during migration to use cloud-managed services. You don’t rebuild the whole system; you just improve parts of it. Example: moving a website to EC2 but switching its database to Amazon RDS for automatic backups and maintenance. It’s ideal when you want better performance without a full redesign.
Refactor / Re-architect
This approach means redesigning your application to become cloud-native. You may shift to containers (ECS/EKS), microservices, or serverless (AWS Lambda). It takes more time but offers major benefits: lower cost, auto-scaling, and better reliability. Example: converting a monolithic billing system into microservices for faster updates.
Replace (SaaS)
Instead of migrating your old app, you replace it with a SaaS solution that already handles everything. Example: switching your self-hosted email system to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. This is best when maintaining custom software is expensive or unnecessary.
Retire / Retain
Some apps aren’t worth moving. You either shut down unused tools (retire) or keep specific systems on-premise for compliance or dependency reasons (retain). Example: keeping an old accounting system on-prem while migrating the rest to AWS.
Pre-Migration Checklist: What to Do Before You Move
Inventory & Dependency Mapping
Before touching AWS, list every application, server, database, and service you use. Then map how they depend on each other-what connects to what, which apps break if another goes down, and which systems share data. This gives you a clear picture of what can move easily and what requires careful sequencing during migration.
Business Goals & Migration Scope
Define why you’re migrating: lower cost, better speed, stronger security, or improved scalability. Then decide what must move first. Some workloads are high priority, while others can wait. Setting the scope upfront helps avoid delays and ensures the migration actually supports your business goals instead of just shifting systems.
Cost & Licensing Review
Check how your current licenses, software subscriptions, and hardware costs will change on AWS. Some tools need cloud-ready licenses; others may be replaced entirely. Instead of guessing, you can contact Technik Go for a proper cost estimate and planning support. A clear financial picture prevents surprises later.
Security & Compliance Review
Review your data rules, encryption needs, retention policies, and required AWS regions. If your industry demands compliance (like finance or healthcare), plan these requirements early. This ensures your AWS setup meets every security guideline from day one and avoids issues during audits or customer reviews.
Pilot Selection & Rollback Plan
Pick one small workload for a trial migration. This pilot helps you test tools, timelines, and bottlenecks without major risk. Always prepare a rollback plan-so if something goes wrong, you can quickly switch back to the old environment without downtime.
Migration Tools & AWS Services to Know
When planning your AWS move, a few key tools make the process smoother, faster, and more predictable. Here’s a plain, easy list:
- AWS Migration Hub– A central dashboard to track all your migration progress across multiple tools and workloads.
- AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) – Safely moves your databases to AWS with minimal downtime. Perfect for MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and more.
- AWS Server Migration Service (SMS) – Automates moving on-premise VMs to Amazon EC2.
- AWS Application Discovery Service – Scans your environment and finds dependencies to help plan the migration.
- CloudEndure Migration (where applicable) – Provides near-zero-downtime migration and continuous replication.
- AWS DataSync – Helps transfer large files or folder structures quickly and securely.
- AWS Snow Family – Physical devices used when you need to move massive data (terabytes or petabytes) offline.
- AWS Well-Architected Reviews – A best-practice checklist to ensure your new cloud setup is secure, efficient, and cost-optimised.
These tools simplify cloud data transfer, reduce migration risks, and make your migration to AWS process much clearer.
Step-by-Step Migration Plan
Migrating to AWS becomes easier when you follow a clear, structured plan. Below are simple, practical steps that most teams use for a safe and smooth transition.
Plan & Assess
Start with a full discovery of the existing systems-what apps you run, where data lives, and what dependencies exist. Create a basic cost model and identify risks such as downtime, compliance rules, or legacy systems. This stage helps you choose the right migration strategy and avoid surprises later. Timing: days to a few weeks.
Build the Landing Zone
Next, prepare your AWS environment. Set up accounts, VPC networking, security groups, IAM roles, monitoring, and backup policies. This is called a “landing zone” because it acts as the foundation where all workloads will move. A strong landing zone prevents security gaps and keeps migrations organised. Timing: days–weeks.
Pilot & Migrate
Before moving everything, test one small application or database. This pilot shows how your tools behave, what issues might appear, and how long migrations may take. After refining the process, begin the full workload migration. Use services like DMS, SMS, or DataSync to handle the actual move. Pilot = days–weeks; full migration = weeks–months.
Cutover & Validation
Once data is synced and resources are running in AWS, switch your traffic (DNS cutover). Run quick “smoke tests” to check if login, load time, API calls, or database connections work correctly. Validate performance, security rules, and logs before shutting down the old setup. Timing: hours–days.
Stabilize & Optimize
After migration, monitor everything closely. Tune performance, right-size instances, apply scaling rules, and review cost usage. This stage ensures your environment stays stable, secure, and cost-efficient. Ongoing optimisations continue for weeks and even months after the initial cutover.
Common Migration Risks and How to Avoid Them
Every AWS migration has a few common risks, but most of them are easy to manage with the right preparation.
One major risk is data loss, which you can avoid by creating full backups and using continuous data replication during the move. Another risk is unexpected downtime, often caused by rushed cutovers; prevent this by running a pilot migration and scheduling a cutover during low-traffic hours.
Many teams also face hidden dependencies-apps connected to services they forgot about. A proper dependency map helps you catch these early and avoid breakage.
Security gaps can appear when IAM roles, network rules, or encryption settings are not set correctly. A basic IAM review and least-privilege policies fix most of these issues.
Finally, cost surprises happen when resources are over-provisioned or left running unnecessarily. Use tagging, AWS Budgets, and cost monitoring tools to stay in control.
With simple planning and checks, these risks become manageable, and your AWS migration stays safe, smooth, and predictable.
Migration Engagement Models & Who Does What
Enterprises can choose different engagement models based on their internal skills and available time. With an in-house model, your internal IT team plans and executes the entire migration, from assessment to cutover. This works only if you already have strong cloud expertise.
A co-managed model blends both teams-your team handles business decisions and approvals, while an AWS migration partner manages heavy technical work like tooling, automation, and testing.
In a fully managed model, the MSP (Managed Service Provider) takes care of almost everything: discovery, runbooks, execution, monitoring, and post-migration optimisation. This is ideal when speed and reliability matter most.
A hybrid model uses a mix of on-prem teams and cloud specialists for complex setups, such as large databases or compliance-heavy workloads.
In every model, the customer always keeps full account ownership and business control, while the MSP focuses on safe execution, incident handling, documentation, and ongoing improvements.
Post-Migration Stabilization & Optimization
Once your workloads are live on AWS, the real work begins. The first 30–90 days are called the stabilisation window-this is where performance, cost, and security are fine-tuned to make sure everything runs smoothly. Teams start by enabling continuous monitoring through AWS CloudWatch, CloudTrail, and X-Ray to track performance, errors, and unusual activity.
Next comes rightsizing, where oversized EC2 instances, unused disks, and idle services are optimised to avoid unnecessary spend. Tagging rules are applied so every resource has clear ownership, environment labels, and cost mapping.
Backups and retention policies are configured using AWS Backup, snapshots, or cross-region replication to ensure resilience. Security teams run vulnerability scans, IAM policy cleanup, encryption checks, and patch updates to close any gaps exposed during migration.
Finally, MSPs or internal teams create updated runbooks, SOPs, and escalation guides, followed by a knowledge-transfer session so your team can confidently operate the new environment. This phase ensures your AWS setup becomes stable, secure, and cost-efficient from day one.
Decision Checklist: Which Migration Approach Fits You?
Choosing the right AWS migration strategy depends on your goals, timeline, risk level, and how much you want to modernise. Use this simple yes/no checklist to identify the best fit:
- Need the fastest, lowest-effort move with minimal changes? → Rehost (Lift-and-Shift).
Perfect if your apps work fine today and you want to migrate quickly. - Need small improvements like managed databases or autoscaling, without a full redesign? → Replatform.
Good for teams that want better performance but limited development time. - Want long-term savings, automation, and cloud-native agility? → Refactor / Re-architect.
Choose this if you’re ready to modernise with containers, microservices, or serverless. - Using outdated apps or expensive tools and want to switch to a modern SaaS alternative? → Replace.
Ideal when rebuilding doesn’t make sense. - Have apps nobody uses or that are cheaper to keep on-prem for now? → Retain / Retire.
Useful for pruning old workloads before migrating. - Do you require compliance-heavy, mission-critical systems?
If yes → Replatform or Refactor for improved security and governance.
This checklist helps you quickly match your business needs to the right AWS migration path.
