Migration & Modernization
Introducing AWS Migration Hub Automation, a new capability accelerating cloud migrations
Today, we are excited to announce the public preview of AWS Migration Hub Automation, a new capability within AWS Migration Hub that accelerates and simplifies cloud migrations. Migration Hub Automation enables customers to automate common migration tasks, significantly reducing manual effort and potential for errors. With Migration Hub Automation, customers can now streamline their migration processes, and achieve more efficient, cost-effective, and scalable cloud migrations. This new capability integrates seamlessly with existing AWS migration services, such as AWS Application Migration Service, allowing customers to leverage AWS best practices and accelerate their journey to the cloud.
Migrating workloads to the cloud often involves a complex series of interdependent tasks, which can present significant challenges when executed without automation. A manual approach introduces challenges that can hinder the efficiency and scalability of the migration process. One of the primary obstacles in migration projects is the repetitive nature of key activities. Discovery, assessment, planning, and execution routinely iterate within individual initiatives or across multiple customer projects. Manually executing these repetitive steps is time-consuming, error-prone, and resource-intensive.
Scaling these processes for large migrations can lead to performance bottlenecks and increased timelines. There are services available to assist with specific migration tasks, such as discovery, data migration, and application replatforming. Effectively leveraging these services often requires specialized knowledge and expertise to execute them in the correct order and ensure a successful migration outcome. This technical complexity can create barriers to scalability, as it becomes challenging to repeat successful migrations consistently.
Even when using migration services that can handle a significant portion of a specific task, these tools often require multiple manual steps to be executed within the same application, such as installing agents, enabling configurations, and validating settings. The lack of seamless integration and automation between these various steps can further hinder the efficiency of the migration process. The lack of comprehensive automation solutions compounds these challenges. Without a centralized, automated approach to managing the migration journey, organizations often struggle to achieve consistent, repeatable outcomes. This can lead to delays, increased costs, and inefficient use of resources throughout the cloud migration journey.
Introducing AWS Migration Hub Automation
To address these migration process challenges, AWS has introduced Migration Hub Automation, a new capability within the AWS Migration Hub service. Migration Hub Automation expands the rich feature set of Migration Hub, giving customers greater control over not just the planning, assessing, and tracking of migration projects, but also the execution of common migration tasks. The automation provided by Migration Hub Automation optimizes the migration process, making it more repeatable and efficient for customers to execute. This automation of migration tasks enabled by Migration Hub Automation delivers a seamless, scalable, and cost-effective migration process.
Migration Hub Automation addresses the opportunity to streamline the execution of tasks across AWS migration services, such as AWS Application Migration Service (MGN). Migration Hub Automation integrates seamlessly with AWS services, providing a centralized way to automate common tasks. For example, Migration Hub Automation can be used to automate the initialization of MGN, the installation of MGN replication agents, launch of test instances and more. Migration Hub Automation abstracts the underlying complexities of AWS migration services and tools, reducing the effort required to upskill customer teams on these various services. This allows organizations to leverage the powerful capabilities of AWS migration services without the need for extensive training or specialized expertise. Migration Hub Automation offers a pre-built library of reusable solutions called Automation units that automates certain migration tasks. Importantly, these automation units follow AWS-recommended best practices, ensuring the migration process adheres to proven methodologies.
In addition to the pre-built library of Migration Hub Automation units available within Migration Hub, the Migration Hub Automation capability also empowers customers and partners to develop their own custom Migration Hub Automation units. These custom automation units can be used to tackle additional, customer-specific migration tasks while enabling teams to reuse them. For example, customers can leverage custom Migration Hub Automation units to automate data discovery, assessment, data transfer, or installation processes that are unique to their environment. This level of customization allows them to further enhance the flexibility and tailored nature of their migration automation efforts, addressing their specific requirements and challenges.
Executing migration tasks using Migration Hub Automation units
At the core of Migration Hub Automation’s capabilities is its tight integration with MGN, AWS’s primary service for rehosting servers to the AWS Cloud. Migration Hub Automation provides a suite of pre-built automation tasks that leverage MGN APIs to streamline the entire rehosting process.
One of the key Migration Hub Automation tasks is the automated deployment and configuration utilizing the MGN Connector. By integrating the MGN Connector deployment process with Migration Hub Automation, teams can streamline the setup and configuration of MGN for large-scale server migrations. This integration allows for an automated and efficient migration experience, reducing manual effort and providing better visibility into the migration progress.
The integration between Migration Hub Automation and MGN is a key differentiator, allowing customers to seamlessly combine the server rehosting capabilities of MGN with the automation features of Migration Hub Automation. This empowers migration teams to establish standard, repeatable migration practices that can dramatically accelerate the journey to AWS, while also improving quality and consistency across large-scale migration programs. Illustrated in Figure 1 is the AWS-MGN-InstallReplicationAgent Automation unit. This managed unit uses the MGN Connector to install MGN replication agents on source servers.
Figure 1 – AWS-MGN-InstallReplicationAgent Automation unit
Once the MGN Connector is deployed, Migration Hub Automation provides additional automation tasks to manage the server replication and cutover process. Migration Hub Automation tasks can initiate the initial server replication, monitor the ongoing data synchronization, and then orchestrate the final cutover to AWS. This includes automating steps like installing MGN replication agent on target servers, launching test server instances, launching cutover servers, and finalizing cutover. Illustrated in Figure 2 is the AWS-MGN-LaunchCutoverInstances Automation unit. This managed unit automates launching cutover instances once testing has been finalized.
Figure 2 – AWS-MGN-LaunchCutoverInstances Automation unit
While the initial launch of Migration Hub Automation focuses on automating server rehosting workflows with MGN, the roadmap includes plans to expand the automation capabilities to cover a wider range of migration scenarios. By creating a unified automation layer across these various migration services, Migration Hub Automation will enable customers to run complex migration tasks entirely within the AWS Migration Hub console.
Pricing and availability
AWS is launching Migration Hub Automation in public preview in the N. Virginia (us-east-1) region. Today, Migration Hub Automation is available at no cost to AWS customers. You pay for the cost of the migration services you use, and any resources being consumed on AWS.
Conclusion
AWS Migration Hub Automation units offer a comprehensive approach to overcoming the challenges of cloud migrations, particularly when scaling efforts. By automating repetitive tasks and ensuring consistent implementation across projects, Migration Hub Automation units streamline workflows, saving time, reducing errors, and lowering costs. With AWS best practices built in, teams can concentrate on strategic initiatives without getting tied up in manual processes or specialized training.
Using Migration Hub Automation units within AWS Migration Hub transforms cloud migrations into a structured and efficient process. It centralizes task management, accelerates migrations, and provides flexibility through built-in and customizable Migration Hub Automation units to address specific needs. For customers aiming to scale, Migration Hub Automation units boost efficiency and adaptability, ensuring smooth migrations that can adjust to evolving requirements.
In the second blog of this series, “Automating Tasks in AWS Migration Hub Journeys with AWS Migration Hub Automation” we will dive deeper into how AWS Migration Hub Automation integrates with AWS Migration Hub Journeys. We will explore how this integration enables users to orchestrate an end-to-end pipeline of migration tasks using Migration Hub Journeys and Migration Hub Automation. This unified experience will help customers operate complex migrations through needed automation, guidance, and status tracking in one place.