How to map out your migration of Oracle PeopleSoft to AWS

Update November 6, 2024: This post was updated by Sridhar Ramavarapu, a Senior Solutions Architect at AWS.

This blog post will guide you through the steps to map your migration of Oracle PeopleSoft to Amazon Web Service (AWS). Migrating enterprise applications to the cloud is a strategic move that can lead to significant cost savings, improved performance, and enhanced scalability. Oracle PeopleSoft is a suite of applications used by many organizations for human resources, finance, supply chain, and student management. As businesses increasingly move towards cloud computing, migrating Oracle PeopleSoft to AWS is a compelling option.

Preparing for migration

Before embarking on the migration journey, thorough preparation is essential. This involves assessing your current Oracle PeopleSoft environment, defining your migration objectives, developing a detailed migration plan, and ensuring compliance with your security requirements.

Assessment – Conduct a comprehensive assessment of your existing Oracle PeopleSoft environment, including hardware, software, customizations, and integrations. Identify any potential challenges, dependencies and interconnections that may impact the migration.
Objectives – Clearly define your migration objectives, such as reducing costs, improving performance, or enhancing scalability. These objectives will guide your migration strategy and decision-making process.
Planning – Develop a detailed migration plan that outlines the scope, timeline, and resources required for the migration. This plan should include risk mitigation strategies and a rollback plan in case of issues.
Compliance and security – Ensure that the migration plan complies with relevant regulatory and security requirements. AWS offers numerous compliance certifications and security features to help meet these needs.

Mapping out the migration

Mapping out the migration involves four key phases: assessment and planning, migration strategy, execution, and post-migration activities.

Assessment and planning

Begin by assessing your current Oracle PeopleSoft environment. Identify all components, including databases, applications, and integrations. Document any customizations and dependencies to ensure a smooth migration. Use AWS tools such as Migration Evaluator, AWS Migration Hub and AWS Application Discovery Service to facilitate this process.

AWS Optimization and Licensing Assessment (OLA) shows you how to save on Oracle and Microsoft licensing costs and run your resources more efficiently. The assessment will enable you to model your deployment options using your existing licensing entitlements and reduce costs in the process. This is delivered by AWS Partner Network (APN) partners.

Migration strategy

Choose a migration strategy that aligns with your objectives. Common strategies include:

Rehosting (lift and shift) – Moving your existing Oracle PeopleSoft applications to AWS with minimal changes. This strategy is quick and cost-effective, but might not fully leverage AWS cloud-native capabilities.
Replatforming – Making some optimizations to your Oracle PeopleSoft applications to take advantage of AWS services. This approach balances speed and cloud-native benefits.

Execution phase

There is AWS Prescriptive Guidance on Set up a highly available PeopleSoft architecture on AWS and Migrate Oracle PeopleSoft to Amazon RDS Custom. These patterns provide an architecture for your Oracle PeopleSoft applications on AWS to ensure high availability (HA) at the network, application, and database tiers (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Diagram showing the PeopleSoft architecture

While migrating your Oracle PeopleSoft applications to AWS, here are some things to keep in mind.

AWS environment setup – Configure your AWS environment, including VPCs, subnets, security groups, and IAM roles using AWS CloudFormation to automate the setup. Ensure that your environment meets Oracle PeopleSoft’s requirements.
Multi-AZ deployments – To enhance availability and fault tolerance, deploy your Oracle PeopleSoft databases using Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) with multi-AZ deployments. This setup automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone, ensuring high availability and automatic failover in case of infrastructure failure.
Data migration – Use Amazon RDS to deploy your Oracle PeopleSoft database. RDS simplifies database management tasks such as provisioning, automated backups, patching, recovery, and scalability. Use AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) to migrate your databases with minimal downtime. AWS DMS supports continuous data replication, ensuring that your databases remain synchronized during the migration process. For large databases, consider using AWS Direct Connect or AWS Snowball to transfer data efficiently. AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated network connection between your on-premises environment and AWS, reducing transfer times and improving security. AWS Snowball is a physical data transport solution that can securely transfer large amounts of data to AWS.
Application migration – Migrate your Oracle PeopleSoft applications to AWS using AWS Application Migration Service (MGN). MGN simplifies, expedites, and reduces the cost of migrating applications to AWS. It continuously replicates your source servers, allowing for non-disruptive testing and minimal downtime.
Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling – Implement auto scaling at the EC2 instance level using AWS Auto Scaling to ensure that your Oracle PeopleSoft applications can handle varying loads efficiently. Auto Scaling automatically adjusts the number of EC2 instances in your deployment based on demand, maintaining performance while optimizing costs.
Integration testing – Test all integrations and customizations to ensure they work seamlessly in the AWS environment. Address any issues promptly to avoid disruptions.
Performance testing – Define performance requirements for Oracle PeopleSoft applications and ensure that the chosen AWS services and instance types can meet the requirements.
Cost estimation – Use AWS Pricing Calculator to estimate the costs involved in running Oracle PeopleSoft on AWS. For cost optimization consider factors like AWS Reserved Instances and AWS Instance Scheduler for Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS.
AWS Countdown – Engage AWS Countdown for large-scale migrations. AWS Countdown provides guidance and technical expertise to help you plan and execute your migration smoothly, minimizing risks and ensuring success. This service is included with AWS Enterprise Support.

Post-migration activities

After migrating Oracle PeopleSoft to AWS, focus on optimizing and securing your environment.

Key activities include:

Performance tuning – Monitor and optimize the performance of your Oracle PeopleSoft applications using AWS CloudWatch and AWS Performance Insights.
Security hardening – Implement AWS security best practices, such as enabling encryption, setting up logging and monitoring with AWS CloudTrail, and regularly reviewing security configurations.
Cost optimization – Use AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Trusted Advisor to identify and eliminate unused or underutilized resources, ensuring cost-efficiency.

Real-world case study

For real-world case studies, see how Arizona State University expanded capacity by migrating PeopleSoft to AWS and how EDF migrated mission-critical Oracle Exadata to Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Oracle.

Conclusion

Migrating Oracle PeopleSoft to AWS can be complex, but with careful planning and the right tools, it can significantly enhance your infrastructure’s performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency. By following the steps and best practices outlined in this blog, you are well on your way to a successful migration.

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