Migration Evaluator Cheat Sheet

Migration Evaluator is a service that helps organizations assess their on-premises infrastructure and plan a migration to AWS. It provides insights into the costs of running current workloads on AWS and recommends optimized AWS resources based on usage patterns.

Migration Evaluator Use Cases

• Use the Agentless Collector for broad discovery of your infrastructure or securely upload existing inventory data for analysis and insights.
• Capture a snapshot of your current on-premises environment to optimize software licensing, map server dependencies, and explore various migration strategies.
• Assess your current state, define a target AWS state, and create a migration readiness plan with accurate cloud cost projections to meet financial goals efficiently.

Migration Evaluator Features

AWS Migration Evaluator  Features offers the following features for your benefit:

• Inventory discovery

  • AWS Migration Evaluator automatically collects and inventories your on-premises resources, including servers, virtual machines, databases, and more.
  • The tool uses a non-intrusive, agentless collector to gather data. This read-only access ensures no disruption to your existing systems while collecting critical performance and utilization metrics.
  • Inventory discovery works seamlessly across VMware, Hyper-V, and Bare Metal environments. It supports Windows, Linux, Active Directory, and SQL Server infrastructures.
  • The collected data is presented in detailed reports, allowing you to analyze the current infrastructure’s usage and performance, which aids in making informed decisions about migration to AWS.

• Migration Evaluator Quick Insights

  • This feature offers a pre-migration assessment that provides business and technical stakeholders with critical visibility into the costs of running their on-premises workloads in the AWS Cloud.
  • Provides a one-page summary for business stakeholders, highlighting the projected cost savings of migrating to AWS.
  • Breaks down costs by infrastructure and software licenses, offering a clear view of potential savings based on current usage patterns.
  • The technical report includes on-premises discovery data, such as server hardware provisioning, SQL Server configurations, and resource utilization.
  • Provides detailed recommendations for re-hosting to Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS based on real-time usage data.
  • Reports are updated automatically to ensure stakeholders always have access to the most up-to-date data, eliminating the need for manual data collection.

• Storage Assessment

  • Storage Insights: A feature within the Business Case that identifies storage-heavy workloads (like file servers or backup servers) and provides optimization opportunities.
  • Instead of just mapping everything to EC2/EBS, it can recommend purpose-built storage services like Amazon FSx or Amazon S3 for cost reduction.
  • Provides a holistic view of the on-premises storage landscape with data-driven mappings and projected cost estimates.

• Server Dependency Mapping with AWS Migration Hub

  • AWS Migration Hub helps track the progress of application migrations across AWS services. Migration Hub also allows for server dependency mapping, which provides insights into the interactions between on-premises servers. By collecting active Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connections, you can use the tool to:
    • Visualize server-to-server dependencies.
    • Organize servers into logical application groups.
    • Identify the best candidates for the first wave of migration.

• AWS Migration Expertise

  • After receiving your Migration Evaluator Quick Insights assessment, your organization may identify the need for additional insights. In such cases, you can request a Migration Evaluator Business Case. This advanced feature includes access to a team of AWS solution architects who will work with you to:
    • Understand your specific migration objectives, such as exiting a data center, transitioning from capital expenditures (cap-ex) to operational expenditures (op-ex), or altering software licensing strategies.
    • Use gathered data to identify the most appropriate migration patterns suited to your goals.
  • The output of this engagement is a Migration Evaluator Business Case. This assessment:
    • Aligns business and technical stakeholders.
    • Provides a clear, prescriptive set of next steps for your migration journey.
  • This process ensures that both business and technology goals are met, simplifying and guiding your migration strategy.

Migration Evaluator Business Case

Following the completion of the migration assessment, the customer is given a business case report that comprises six sections:

• Analysis and Insights: An overview of the collection strategy (existing data or agentless collector), assumptions, scope, server counts, and timeline of the migration assessment.
• Financial Summary: Provides multiple workload-specific ‘what-if’ scenarios to compare purchasing options for migration.
• Business Value: Highlights the AWS Cloud Value Framework (staff productivity, operational resilience, business agility) and includes a Sustainability Assessment. This provides an estimated carbon emission reduction comparison between running workloads on-premises versus in AWS.
• Deployment Summary & Licensing: Offers detailed insights into Microsoft SQL Server and Windows Server licensing, helping you compare Bring Your Own License (BYOL) vs. License Included (LI) models to find the lowest TCO.
• Storage Assessment (if applicable): A comprehensive view of the on-premises storage landscape, with data-driven mappings to AWS storage services and projected cost estimates.
• Next Steps:  Provide recommendations for the customer to ensure a successful migration to AWS.

Migration Evaluator Pricing

• Migration Evaluator is a free AWS service that helps you build a cloud migration business case. There are no charges for using its tools, reports, or AWS solution architect consultations. Costs apply only if you provision AWS resources during or after migration.

Migration Evaluator References:

https://aws.amazon.com/migration-evaluator/features/

https://aws.amazon.com/migration-evaluator/