AWS Prescriptive Guidance glossary

The following are commonly used terms in strategies, guides, and patterns provided by AWS Prescriptive Guidance. To suggest entries, please use the Provide feedback link at the end of the glossary.

Migration terms

7 Rs

Seven common migration strategies for moving applications to the cloud. These strategies build upon the 5 Rs that Gartner identified in 2011 and consist of the following:

• Refactor/re-architect – Move an application and modify its architecture by taking full advantage of cloud-native features to improve agility, performance, and scalability. This typically involves porting the operating system and database. Example: Migrate your on-premises Oracle database to the Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition.

• Replatform (lift and reshape) – Move an application to the cloud, and introduce some level of optimization to take advantage of cloud capabilities. Example: Migrate your on-premises Oracle database to Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Oracle in the AWS Cloud.

• Repurchase (drop and shop) – Switch to a different product, typically by moving from a traditional license to a SaaS model. Example: Migrate your customer relationship management (CRM) system to Salesforce.com.

• Rehost (lift and shift) – Move an application to the cloud without making any changes to take advantage of cloud capabilities. Example: Migrate your on-premises Oracle database to Oracle on an EC2 instance in the AWS Cloud.

• Relocate (hypervisor-level lift and shift) – Move infrastructure to the cloud without purchasing new hardware, rewriting applications, or modifying your existing operations. This migration scenario is specific to VMware Cloud on AWS, which supports virtual machine (VM) compatibility and workload portability between your on-premises environment and AWS. You can use the VMware Cloud Foundation technologies from your on-premises data centers when you migrate your infrastructure to VMware Cloud on AWS. Example: Relocate the hypervisor hosting your Oracle database to VMware Cloud on AWS.

• Retain (revisit) – Keep applications in your source environment. These might include applications that require major refactoring, and you want to postpone that work until a later time, and legacy applications that you want to retain, because there’s no business justification for migrating them.

• Retire – Decommission or remove applications that are no longer needed in your source environment.

application portfolio

A collection of detailed information about each application used by an organization, including the cost to build and maintain the application, and its business value. This information is key to the portfolio discovery and analysis process and helps identify and prioritize the applications to be migrated, modernized, and optimized.

artificial intelligence operations (AIOps)

The process of using machine learning techniques to solve operational problems, reduce operational incidents and human intervention, and increase service quality. For more information about how AIOps is used in the AWS migration strategy, see the operations integration guide.

AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF)

A framework of guidelines and best practices from AWS to help organizations develop an efficient and effective plan to move successfully to the cloud. AWS CAF organizes guidance into six focus areas called perspectives: business, people, governance, platform, security, and operations. The business, people, and governance perspectives focus on business skills and processes; the platform, security, and operations perspectives focus on technical skills and processes. For example, the people perspective targets stakeholders who handle human resources (HR), staffing functions, and people management. For this perspective, AWS CAF provides guidance for people development, training, and communications to help ready the organization for successful cloud adoption. For more information, see the AWS CAF website and the AWS CAF whitepaper.

AWS Workload Qualification Framework (AWS WQF)

A tool that evaluates database migration workloads, recommends migration strategies, and provides work estimates. AWS WQF is included with AWS Schema Conversion Tool (AWS SCT). It analyzes database schemas and code objects, application code, dependencies, and performance characteristics, and provides assessment reports.

business continuity planning (BCP)

A plan that addresses the potential impact of a disruptive event, such as a large-scale migration, on operations and enables a business to resume operations quickly.

Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE)

A multi-disciplinary team that drives cloud adoption efforts across an organization, including developing cloud best practices, mobilizing resources, establishing migration timelines, and leading the organization through large-scale transformations. For more information, see the CCoE posts on the AWS Cloud Enterprise Strategy Blog.

cloud stages of adoption

The four phases that organizations typically go through when they migrate to the AWS Cloud:

• Project – Running a few cloud-related projects for proof of concept and learning purposes

• Foundation – Making foundational investments to scale your cloud adoption (e.g., creating a landing zone, defining a CCoE, establishing an operations model)

• Migration – Migrating individual applications

• Re-invention – Optimizing products and services, and innovating in the cloud

These stages were defined by Stephen Orban in the blog post The Journey Toward Cloud-First & the Stages of Adoption on the AWS Cloud Enterprise Strategy blog. For information about how they relate to the AWS migration strategy, see the migration readiness guide.

configuration management database (CMDB)

A database that contains information about a company’s hardware and software products, configurations, and inter-dependencies. You typically use data from a CMDB in the portfolio discovery and analysis stage of migration.

epic

In agile methodologies, functional categories that help organize and prioritize your work. Epics provide a high-level description of requirements and implementation tasks. For example, AWS CAF security epics include identity and access management, detective controls, infrastructure security, data protection, and incident response. For more information about epics in the AWS migration strategy, see the program implementation guide.

heterogeneous database migration

Migrating your source database to a target database that uses a different database engine (for example, Oracle to Amazon Aurora). Heterogeneous migration is typically part of a re-architecting effort, and converting the schema can be a complex task. AWS provides AWS SCT that helps with schema conversions.

homogeneous database migration

Migrating your source database to a target database that shares the same database engine (for example, Microsoft SQL Server to Amazon RDS for SQL Server). Homogeneous migration is typically part of a rehosting or replatforming effort. You can use native database utilities to migrate the schema.

hypercare period

Immediately following cutover, the period of time when a migration team manages and monitors the migrated applications in the cloud in order to address any issues. Typically, this period is 1–4 days in length. At the end of the hypercare period, the migration team typically transfers responsibility for the applications to the cloud operations team.

idle application

An application that has an average CPU and memory usage between 5 and 20 percent over a period of 90 days. In a migration project, it is common to retire these applications or retain them on premises.

IT information library (ITIL)

A set of best practices for delivering IT services and aligning these services with business requirements. ITIL provides the foundation for ITSM.

IT service management (ITSM)

Activities associated with designing, implementing, managing, and supporting IT services for an organization. For information about integrating cloud operations with ITSM tools, see the operations integration guide.

landing zone

A landing zone is a well-architected, multi-account AWS environment that is scalable and secure. This is a starting point from which your organizations can quickly launch and deploy workloads and applications with confidence in their security and infrastructure environment. For more information about landing zones, see Setting up a secure and scalable multi-account AWS environment.

large migration

A migration of 300 or more servers.

Migration Acceleration Program (MAP)

An AWS program that provides consulting support, training, and services to help organizations build a strong operational foundation for moving to the cloud, and to help offset the initial cost of migrations. MAP includes a migration methodology for executing legacy migrations in a methodical way and a set of tools to automate and accelerate common migration scenarios.

Migration Portfolio Assessment (MPA)

An online tool that provides information for validating the business case for migrating to the AWS Cloud. MPA provides detailed portfolio assessment (server right-sizing, pricing, TCO comparisons, migration cost analysis) as well as migration planning (application data analysis and data collection, application grouping, migration prioritization, and wave planning). The MPA tool (requires login) is available free of charge to all AWS consultants and APN Partner consultants.

Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA)

The process of gaining insights about an organization’s cloud readiness status, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and building an action plan to close identified gaps, using the AWS CAF. For more information, see the migration readiness guide. MRA is the first phase of the AWS migration strategy.

migration at scale

The process of moving the majority of the application portfolio to the cloud in waves, with more applications moved at a faster rate in each wave. This phase uses the best practices and lessons learned from the earlier phases to implement a migration factory of teams, tools, and processes to streamline the migration of workloads through automation and agile delivery. This is the third phase of the AWS migration strategy.

migration factory

Cross-functional teams that streamline the migration of workloads through automated, agile approaches. Migration factory teams typically include operations, business analysts and owners, migration engineers, developers, and DevOps professionals working in sprints. Between 20 and 50 percent of an enterprise application portfolio consists of repeated patterns that can be optimized by a factory approach. For more information, see the discussion of migration factories and the Cloud Migration Factory guide in this content set.

migration metadata

The information about the application and server that is needed to complete the migration. Each migration pattern requires a different set of migration metadata. Examples of migration metadata include the target subnet, security group, and AWS account.

migration pattern

A repeatable migration task that details the migration strategy, the migration destination, and the migration application or service used. Example: Rehost migration to Amazon EC2 with AWS Application Migration Service.

migration strategy

The approach used to migrate a workload to the AWS Cloud. For more information, see the 7 Rs entry in this glossary and see Mobilize your organization to accelerate large-scale migrations.

operational-level agreement (OLA)

An agreement that clarifies what functional IT groups promise to deliver to each other, to support a service-level agreement (SLA).

operations integration (OI)

The process of modernizing operations in the cloud, which involves readiness planning, automation, and integration. For more information, see the operations integration guide.

organizational change management (OCM)

A framework for managing major, disruptive business transformations from a people, culture, and leadership perspective. OCM helps organizations prepare for, and transition to, new systems and strategies by accelerating change adoption, addressing transitional issues, and driving cultural and organizational changes. In the AWS migration strategy, this framework is called people acceleration, because of the speed of change required in cloud adoption projects. For more information, see the OCM guide.

playbook

A set of predefined steps that capture the work associated with migrations, such as delivering core operations functions in the cloud. A playbook can take the form of scripts, automated runbooks, or a summary of processes or steps required to operate your modernized environment.

portfolio assessment

A process of discovering, analyzing, and prioritizing the application portfolio in order to plan the migration. For more information, see Evaluating migration readiness.

responsible, accountable, consulted, informed (RACI) matrix

A matrix that defines and assigns roles and responsibilities in a project. For example, you can create a RACI to define security control ownership or to identify roles and responsibilities for specific tasks in a migration project.

runbook

A set of manual or automated procedures required to perform a specific task. These are typically built to streamline repetitive operations or procedures with high error rates.

service-level agreement (SLA)

An agreement that clarifies what an IT team promises to deliver to their customers, such as service uptime and performance.

task list

A tool that is used to track progress through a runbook. A task list contains an overview of the runbook and a list of general tasks to be completed. For each general task, it includes the estimated amount of time required, the owner, and the progress.

workstream

Functional groups in a migration project that are responsible for a specific set of tasks. Each workstream is independent but supports the other workstreams in the project. For example, the portfolio workstream is responsible for prioritizing applications, wave planning, and collecting migration metadata. The portfolio workstream delivers these assets to the migration workstream, which then migrates the servers and applications.

zombie application

An application that has an average CPU and memory usage below 5 percent. In a migration project, it is common to retire these applications.

Modernization terms

business capability

What a business does to generate value (for example, sales, customer service, or marketing). Microservices architectures and development decisions can be driven by business capabilities. For more information, see the Organized around business capabilities section of the Running containerized microservices on AWS whitepaper.

domain-driven design

An approach to developing a complex software system by connecting its components to evolving domains, or core business goals, that each component serves. This concept was introduced by Eric Evans in his book, Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software (Boston: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2003). For information about how you can use domain-driven design with the strangler fig pattern, see Modernizing legacy Microsoft ASP.NET (ASMX) web services incrementally by using containers and Amazon API Gateway.

microservice

A small, independent service that communicates over well-defined APIs and is typically owned by small, self-contained teams. For example, an insurance system might include microservices that map to business capabilities, such as sales or marketing, or subdomains, such as purchasing, claims, or analytics. The benefits of microservices include agility, flexible scaling, easy deployment, reusable code, and resilience. For more information, see Integrating microservices by using AWS serverless services.

microservices architecture

An approach to building an application with independent components that run each application process as a microservice. These microservices communicate through a well-defined interface by using lightweight APIs. Each microservice in this architecture can be updated, deployed, and scaled to meet demand for specific functions of an application. For more information, see Implementing microservices on AWS.

modernization

Transforming an outdated (legacy or monolithic) application and its infrastructure into an agile, elastic, and highly available system in the cloud to reduce costs, gain efficiencies, and take advantage of innovations. For more information, see Strategy for modernizing applications in the AWS Cloud.

modernization readiness assessment

An evaluation that helps determine the modernization readiness of an organization’s applications; identifies benefits, risks, and dependencies; and determines how well the organization can support the future state of those applications. The outcome of the assessment is a blueprint of the target architecture, a roadmap that details development phases and milestones for the modernization process, and an action plan for addressing identified gaps. For more information, see Evaluating modernization readiness for applications in the AWS Cloud.

monolithic applications (monoliths)

Applications that run as a single service with tightly coupled processes. Monolithic applications have several drawbacks. If one application feature experiences a spike in demand, the entire architecture must be scaled. Adding or improving a monolithic application’s features also becomes more complex when the code base grows. To address these issues, you can use a microservices architecture. For more information, see Decomposing monoliths into microservices.

polyglot persistence

Independently choosing a microservice’s data storage technology based on data access patterns and other requirements. If your microservices have the same data storage technology, they can encounter implementation challenges or experience poor performance. Microservices are more easily implemented and achieve better performance and scalability if they use the data store best adapted to their requirements. For more information, see Enabling data persistence in microservices.

split-and-seed model

A pattern for scaling and accelerating modernization projects. As new features and product releases are defined, the core team splits up to create new product teams. This helps scale your organization’s capabilities and services, improves developer productivity, and supports rapid innovation. For more information, see Phased approach to modernizing applications in the AWS Cloud.

strangler fig pattern

An approach to modernizing monolithic systems by incrementally rewriting and replacing system functionality until the legacy system can be decommissioned. This pattern uses the analogy of a fig vine that grows into an established tree and eventually overcomes and replaces its host. The pattern was introduced by Martin Fowler as a way to manage risk when rewriting monolithic systems. For an example of how to apply this pattern, see Modernizing legacy Microsoft ASP.NET (ASMX) web services incrementally by using containers and Amazon API Gateway.

two-pizza team

A small DevOps team that you can feed with two pizzas. A two-pizza team size ensures the best possible opportunity for collaboration in software development. For more information, see the Two-pizza team section of the Introduction to DevOps on AWS whitepaper.