How we migrated to AWS early with a "forklift plus" approach, in order to accelerate a number of technology and architecture improvements.

1. Best practices for
running Windows
workloads on AWS
T. Alexander Lystad
Chief Cloud Architect
Visma Enterprise PD
alexanderlystad

2. ● >9k employees
● We make cloud software that
automates and simplifies business
and administrative processes
○ HRM
○ ERP
○ CRM
○ Invoicing
○ Education
○ Health
○ +++

3. →

5. 6 releases per year
↓
6 releases per month

7. Migration strategy

8. Migration strategy
Pure Forklift Forklift Plus Optimize Later
Export VM images to AWS
Build AMIs for immutable,
autoscaling, autohealing
infrastructure
Migrate to containers or serverless
Manage own database servers Use Amazon RDS Migrate database tech
Manage own load balancing
solutions
Use Amazon Elastic Load Balancing Add caching solutions
Make manual changes to the
infrastructure
Use Amazon CloudFormation or
Terraform for IaC

9. Migration strategy
Pure Forklift Forklift Plus Optimize Later
Export VM images to AWS
Build AMIs for immutable,
autoscaling, autohealing
infrastructure
Migrate to containers or serverless
Manage own database servers Use Amazon RDS Migrate database tech
Manage own load balancing
solutions
Use Amazon Elastic Load Balancing Add caching solutions
Make manual changes to the
infrastructure
Use Amazon CloudFormation or
Terraform for IaC

10. Migration strategy
Pure Forklift Forklift Plus Optimize Later
Export VM images to AWS
Build AMIs for immutable,
autoscaling, autohealing
infrastructure
Migrate to containers or serverless
Manage own database servers Use Amazon RDS Migrate database tech
Manage own load balancing
solutions
Use Amazon Elastic Load Balancing Add caching solutions
Make manual changes to the
infrastructure
Use Amazon CloudFormation or
Terraform for IaC

12. 2016
● Citrix Netscaler

13. 2016
● Citrix Netscaler
● 2 application servers
○ Technology
■ Windows Server 2012 R2
■ IIS
■ C#.NET

14. 2016
● Citrix Netscaler
● 2 application servers
○ Technology
■ Windows Server 2012 R2
■ IIS
■ C#.NET
○ 3 components
■ Web application
■ Messaging worker
■ Misc worker

15. 2016
● Citrix Netscaler
● 2 application servers
○ Technology
■ Windows Server 2012 R2
■ IIS
■ C#.NET
○ 3 components
■ Web application
■ Messaging worker
■ Misc worker
● 2 database servers
○ Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise

16. Nov 2016: Migration to AWS

17. Nov 2016: Migration to AWS
● Citrix Netscaler → Elastic Load Balancer (now CLB)
○ Amazon Route 53, AWS Certificate Manager

18. Nov 2016: Migration to AWS
● Citrix Netscaler → Elastic Load Balancer (now CLB)
○ Amazon Route 53, AWS Certificate Manager
● Snowflake servers → IaC and immutable infrastructure
● Manual scaling of 1 role → Autoscaling of 3 roles

19. Nov 2016: Migration to AWS
● Citrix Netscaler → Elastic Load Balancer (now CLB)
○ Amazon Route 53, AWS Certificate Manager
● Snowflake servers → IaC and immutable infrastructure
● Manual scaling of 1 role → Autoscaling of 3 roles
● MSSQL Enterprise → RDS MSSQL Standard

21. Nov 2017
● RDS MSSQL → RDS Aurora MySQL

22. Nov 2017
● RDS MSSQL → RDS Aurora MySQL
○ Data migration via application data layer

23. Nov 2017
● RDS MSSQL → RDS Aurora MySQL
○ Data migration via application data layer
○ Easier because we avoided proprietary features

24. Nov 2017
● RDS MSSQL → RDS Aurora MySQL
○ Data migration via application data layer
○ Easier because we avoided proprietary features
○ Challenges and considerations
■ No GUIDs in MySQL
■ No transactions for schema changes in MySQL
■ MySQL strict mode
■ MySQL handled locking less well 😢

26. 2018
● EC2 AMIs → Amazon ECS

27. 2018
● EC2 AMIs → Amazon ECS
○ Deploying: 30 minutes → 5 minutes
○ Scaling up: 5 minutes → 30 seconds

28. 2018
● EC2 AMIs → Amazon ECS
○ Deploying: 30 minutes → 5 minutes
○ Scaling up: 5 minutes → 30 seconds
● Windows Server 2012 R2 → 2016

29. 2018
● EC2 AMIs → Amazon ECS
○ Deploying: 30 minutes → 5 minutes
○ Scaling up: 5 minutes → 30 seconds
● Windows Server 2012 R2 → 2016
● Amazon ElastiCache for Redis

30. 2018
● EC2 AMIs → Amazon ECS
○ Deploying: 30 minutes → 5 minutes
○ Scaling up: 5 minutes → 30 seconds
● Windows Server 2012 R2 → 2016
● Amazon ElastiCache for Redis
● Microservices architecture

32. 4x customers

34. Comparing apples and oranges

35. 1. Self-service
a. Less waiting
b. Better decisions
Comparing apples and oranges

36. 1. Self-service
a. Less waiting
b. Better decisions
2. Better architecture
a. Reliability
b. Scalability, performance
c. Security
Comparing apples and oranges

37. 1. Self-service
a. Less waiting
b. Better decisions
2. Better architecture
a. Reliability
b. Scalability, performance
c. Security
3. More services, e.g.
a. Infrastructure as code
b. Monitoring
Comparing apples and oranges

38. Future
● .NET → .NET Core
● Windows → Linux
● Amazon DynamoDB and AWS Lambda
● Complete transition to microservices architecture

39. Best Practices
● Migrate workloads early with a “forklift plus”
approach to speed up modernization efforts
○ DevOps
○ Continuous Delivery
○ Architecture
● Optimize away unnecessary license costs
○ MSSQL → *
○ Windows → Linux

40. Respect
Reliability
Innovation
Competence
Team spirit