Top 5 Things to Take Care of During On Premise to AWS Migration

Over the past few years, I've helped several teams move their workloads from on-premises infrastructure to AWS. Most of them worried about downtime, rising costs, and breaking something that already worked fine. The teams that planned well in advance avoided almost all of it. Here are the things I check first during an on premise to AWS migration.

1. Start With Discovery, Not the Move

Before I migrate anything from on premise to AWS, I list every application we run and note what each one connects to. Some applications share a database or depend on another on-premises database system, and I need to know that before I move them. This helps make the rest of the planning much simpler.

2. Match Each Workload to the Right Strategy

AWS gives you seven ways to migrate, known as the 7 Rs: rehost, relocate, replatform, repurchase, refactor, retire, and retain. I don't move every app the same way. Some simply lift and shift, a few are worth refactoring, and a surprising number are better off retired.

3. Monitor Costs From Day One

When on-premises, the bill stays the same every month. But on AWS, you are charged based on usage, so the cost depends on what you actually run. A test instance someone forgot to shut down, or a server bigger than the workload needs, will raise the bill before anyone notices.  So, I tag each resource, set budgets, and review the spend every week.

4. Set Up Security Before You Go Live on AWS

I set up IAM roles, least-privilege access, encryption, and logging while the migration is still being planned, before any workload runs on AWS. A security gap on a system that's already serving users is much harder to fix than one caught early. Starting with these controls in place keeps that risk low.

5. Test Everything Before You Cut Over

Before we send live traffic to AWS, we run the migrated systems on EC2 and RDS alongside what's still on-premises and compare response times and error rates against the old numbers. We confirm that automated backups and a rollback to the on-premises setup both work while we can still fall back safely. We move users over only after these results hold up.

Conclusion

On premise to AWS migration is not just a change of hosting. It affects how your applications scale, what you pay each month, and how fast you recover when something breaks. Plan the discovery, pick the right strategy for each workload, keep an eye on costs, secure the environment early, and test before you cut over. Do that, and the migration rarely surprises you.

If you want expert help with the migration, you can opt for cloud migration services from a trusted provider and bring an experienced team on board for the planning and execution.