Introduction In this blog post, we will walk you through the step-by-step process of completing VMware virtual machine (VM) migrations to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) using the (Application Migration Service). Moreover, we will show how to apply a custom post-launch action script to remove proprietary VMware tools from the migrated VMs. Migrating on-premises VMware workloads to Amazon EC2 can provide significant benefits including increased scalability, improved performance, and reduced operational costs. The Application Migration Service simplifies this process by providing a sea ..read more

First introduced in the mid-20th century, mainframe systems continue to be the backbone of many enterprises relying on these systems for mission-critical applications. In fact, it is estimated that at least 71% of Fortune 500 companies use mainframe systems. Globally, 90% of credit card transactions happen on mainframe systems. According to IBM, USD 7.7 trillion in annual credit card payments, 29 billion annual ATM transactions, and 12.6 billion transactions per day at 92 of the world’s top 100 banks rely on mainframes to host their core systems. Due to the acceleration of digital transformati ..read more

This blog post was co-written by Brent Eager, Senior Software Engineer, StormForge StormForge is the creator of Optimize Live, a Kubernetes vertical rightsizing solution that is compatible with the Kubernetes HorizontalPodAutoscaler (HPA). Using cluster-based agents, machine learning, and Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus, Optimize Live is able to continuously calculate and apply optimal resource requests, limits, and HPA target utilization across thousands of workloads. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how using Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus allows StormForge to focus on their cor ..read more

AWS customers realize more than a 5:1 ratio of benefits to investment costs over five years with breakeven on their investment occurring in an average of 10 months (source: “The Business Value of Amazon Web Services”, an IDC whitepaper). This blog aims to help Information Technology (IT) teams calculate this value using the tools needed to build a data driven business case for moving from on-premises to AWS. When companies compare the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of running workloads on-premises to running them on AWS, they primarily focus on infrastructure costs. While infrastructure cost re ..read more

Today, applications are more distributed than ever before and they no longer run in isolation. This is especially the case when utilizing  Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) or Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). A distributed workload or system is one that encompasses multiple small independent components, all working together to complete a task or job. This helps to ensure that even if one system or component fails, that the availability of the service will not be affected. Distributed Tracing is a method of observing client-side requests as they propaga ..read more

It is important for cloud security operations teams to maintain a high level of cloud security and detect and respond to malicious web activity in near real-time. AWS WAF helps protect web applications from common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. However, as your cloud environment scales with your business needs, analysis and monitoring of the logs across multiple AWS Accounts and Regions can become a challenge in the absence of a centralized visualization platform. In this blog post, you will learn how to configure l ..read more

Many customers migrating their workloads to AWS using AWS Application Migration Service want to use different AWS accounts to support their company’s governance and security needs. Customers may also choose to use Infrastructure As Code (IaC) templates using AWS CloudFormation or Terraform with Application Migration Service to deploy source servers to different AWS Accounts. To utilize multiple accounts and utilize IaC, a source server can be migrated using the Application Migration Service, and then an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) can be created from the migrated server for launching additional ..read more

Modern software development teams understand the importance of observability as a critical aspect of building reliable and resilient applications. By implementing observability practices, software teams can proactively identify issues, uncover performance bottlenecks, and enhance system reliability. However, it is a fairly recent trend and still lacks industry-wide adoption. As organizations standardize on containers, they often lift and shift legacy applications into containers. Such legacy applications provide insights mostly through logs. Unlike modern applications, they don’t generate metr ..read more

Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) need to operate with high availability and mitigate security risks while keeping costs low. An AWS multi-account environment with workload isolation, robust access control, cost visualization, and integrated security mechanisms can help SMBs build a platform to support growth. SMBs want to deploy a multi-account environment on AWS quickly and securely to maximize the benefits of cloud. Last year we published the Multi-account strategy for small and medium businesses blog post that delved into why SMBs should build a multi-account cloud environment, and the AW ..read more

The AWS Well-Architected Framework is a collection of best practices that helps customers build and operate secure, high-performing, resilient, and cost-effective workloads on the AWS Cloud. With the AWS Well-Architected Tool (AWS WA Tool), you can review the state of your applications and workloads against architectural best practices, identify opportunities for improvement, and track progress over time. Tracking the progress of remediation is crucial because it allows you to continuously improve the architecture of your applications and workloads, ensuring they remain aligned with best pract ..read more