Foundation playbook for AWS large migrations

Amazon Web Services (contributors)

February 2021 (document history)

A large migration project is built upon its people foundation and platform foundation. Properly preparing these foundations is critical to the success of the project. Platform refers to the technology decisions you make, such as infrastructure, operations, and security. People refers to the teams and individuals who contribute to the project, from beginning to end.

In this playbook, you build the foundation workstream. Because this workstream is intended to prepare the platform and people before you begin migrating applications, you start and complete this workstream within the first stage of a large migration, initialization. For more information about core and supporting workstreams, see Workstreams in a large migration in the Foundation playbook for AWS large migrations.

The purpose of this playbook is to prepare the platform foundation and people foundation to support a large-scale migration effort. Both of these foundations are critical to the success of large migrations. This guide consists of the following sections:

• People foundation – In this section, you define the workstreams in your large migration project and build a responsible, accountable, consulted, informed (RACI) matrix for each high-level task. It also includes recommendations for establishing a Cloud Enablement Engine (CEE). This section also contains training resources and helps you build a training dashboard for your large migration.

• Platform foundation – In this section, you review technology considerations for the on-premises and AWS Cloud environments, such as infrastructure, operations, security. You make key decisions in these categories, which you record as migration principles.

Guidance for large migrations

Migrating 300 or more servers is considered a large migration. The people, process, and technology challenges of a large migration project are typically new to most enterprises. This document is part of an AWS Prescriptive Guidance series about large migrations to the AWS Cloud. This series is designed to help you apply the correct strategy and best practices from the outset, to streamline your journey to the cloud.

The following figure shows the other documents in this series. Review the strategy first, then the guides, and then proceed to the playbooks. To access the complete series, see Large migrations to the AWS Cloud.

About the tools and templates

In this playbook, you create the following tools, which you use to prepare the platform and people:

• Migration principles

• RACI matrices

• Dashboard for training

We recommend using the foundation playbook templates included in this playbook and then customizing them for your portfolio, processes, and environment. The instructions in this playbook tell you when and how to customize each of these templates. This playbook includes the following templates:

• Dashboard template for training – This dashboard template helps you build a training plan for each workstream and track each individual’s progress toward completing the required training.

• Data replication calculator – This workbook helps you estimate the amount of time needed to complete data replication.

• Migration principles template – This template helps you record the key infrastructure, operations, and security decisions that you need to make when preparing your platform.

• RACI template – This template helps you build a high-level and detailed RACI matrices that outline the roles and responsibilities of your large migration project.