SAP-C02 Amazon AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional – New Domain 3 – Migration Planning part 2

3. AWS Snowball

Hey everyone and welcome back. In today’s video, we will be discussing about AWS Snowball. Now, AWS Snowball is a data transport solution that accelerates moving terabytes to even petabytes of data into and out of AWS, using the storage device which is specifically designed to be secured for physically transport. Now, one of the great advances advantages of Snowball is typically like an organization faces huge amount of challenge when they have huge amount of data and they want to move the data into s three. Let’s say for example, you have a 50 terabyte of data and if you want to move it to s three, you will incur huge amount of internet costs. It will take a huge amount of time. Now, lot of organizations, they even have hundreds of terabytes of data to even a petabyte of data.

Now, when you talk about such scale uploading data to s three directly is not a very ideal choice. It would be quite expensive. So for such cases, AW Snowball is a great fit. Now, AW Snowball is a device which looks something similar to this. So you can assume it to be a storage device which is encapsulated by a secured container and this device is transported to your organization. So let’s take an example. Let’s say I have 70 terabytes of data that I want to upload to s three. Now, I don’t really have a very good internet connection. Even if I have, it will take a lot of time. So what I do, I request AWS to send me this Snowball device. Now this Snowball device has varied capacity ranging up to 80 terabytes. So I ask the AWS to send me this device.

Once AWS gives me the device, I connect it inside my network, I transfer my 70 terabyte of data to this device and I ship it back to AWS. Now, AWS will connect to this device and they’ll upload it to s three for me. So my responsibility is to connect this device to my network and upload the data to this device and send it back to AWS. AWS will go ahead and upload that data to s three and I can actually do that within a few days and I don’t really have to worry about the internet at all. Now, ada is Snowball supports two major options while you are creating a job. One is import to s three and second is export from s three. So let’s say you have huge amount of data in your on premise storage devices and you want to move all of those data to s three, you have that option as well.

Now, second option is let’s assume that you have huge amount of data in s three and you want to move it to the on premise storage device. That is also an option that you can enroll with the help of snowball. So let me quickly show you how exactly it might look like in AWS console. So this is how the snowball console really looks like. So the first thing that you need to do is you’ll have to create a job. So that is the first thing. Now within this there are three major options which are available import into S three, export from S three and local compute and storage only. Now let’s say that I want to import into S three. I have huge amount of data on premise and I want to put all of the data into S three. So I’ll select the import into S three button and let’s click on Next. So here you have the option for adding an existing address or you can add a new address.

So if you click on New Address you’ll have to give your exact address over here. The reason why you need to give the address is because Aid address will ship you the snowball device and that device will be shipped to the address that you give over here. So make sure you give a proper address and phone number. So let me just select the existing address. I’ll click on Next and here you need to give a job name. You can just give a demo job name. Now you have two device types which are available. One is snowball and second is snowball. Edge. Snowball Edge is little different since we are speaking about snowball, this is the device that we are interested in. Now if you look into the storage capacity it is of 80 TB. And here you have to select the bucket.

The bucket is basically the bucket where you want your data to be imported into. So let me just select a random bucket. Let’s click on Next and this is the encryption to remember that a snowball device has encryption enabled. So any data that you put inside the device will be encrypted. So this is one important part to remember. So you can specify the Kms key. So there is a default Kms key. However, you can have your own custom Kms key as well. Once you have selected this you need to create or select IAM role. So by default you will be able to use the managed role which the snowball provides. You can just click on allow here and click on Next.

So here you have the option for SNS topic. So SNS topic is quite important because if you want to receive an email or SMS related to the job status so these are the job status which are available. Whether the job is created or whether the device has been on transit, whether the device has been delivered and if you are sending it back to the AWS, whether the device has been at the AWS. Is the data getting imported? Has it been completed? And so on. Once you have selected SNS topic you will be on the review screen and you will be done and the snowball device would be shipped to you. So looking into the high level overview about the steps which are involved in creating a job. First is you have to create a job in the AWS console.

And once you receive the snowball device, you need to connect that snowball device within your network. And you can go ahead and copy your data inside the snowball. Or if it is an export job, then you can copy the data from the snowball to your storage device. And since this is an import job, we are creating import job, we are assuming that you are going to copy the data from your storage device to the snowball. And once you have done that, you can go ahead and send the snowball device back to AWS and AWS will take care of moving the data to S Three. Now, speaking about the pricing structure for snowball, it is based on few categories. The first one is Service charge, the second one is Extra Discharge.

The third one is Data transfer charge, fourth is the shipping charge and fifth is the S Three charge. So let’s go ahead and understand them in a high level overview. So speaking about the service fee, the snowball for 50 TB is $200 and for 80 TB it is $250. With a little exception for Singapore it costs $320. So this is the first part. Second is the extra day charge. Like you cannot really keep snowball for a month without getting charged. So what AWS does for the first ten days of onsite usage are free and extra day onsite charge is $15. So you can keep it for the first ten days and post which if you decide to have it, you will be charged at $15 a day. And if you’re in Singapore, then it will cost you a $20 per onsite date.

Now along with that, you have to pay for the data transfer as well. So, data transfer into S Three is completely free. However, the data transfer out of Amazon S Three is priced at a regional level. So, this is the high level overview about snowball. Let’s discuss some of the important pointers. The first one is the snowball by itself because in exam you might get a use case and you have to select the right option. So you need to understand in which use case snowball would be helpful. So the snowball with snowball you can transfer hundreds of terabytes or petabytes of data between your on premise data centers and S Three. This is something that we already know. Now, in US region snowball comes in two sizes. One is of 50 TB and second is of 80 TB. Now for other regions you only have the option of 80 TB snowballs only.

Now the next important point is that encryption is enforced protecting your data at threat and in physical transit. So it might happen that let’s say that you have shipped the snowball device back to AWS and something happened between you and AWS. So your data cannot be stolen because it is encrypted. Now, one great feature about snowball, or one great advantage, is that you don’t have to buy or maintain your own hardware devices. You can get it from AWS. Now, snowball is definitely, definitely good, but it might not be quite suitable for all the situation. So let’s say that if you have to transfer less than ten TB of data between your onpremise and S three, snowball might not be the economical choice always. So this is something that you should remember.

4. VMWare vCenter Migartions

Hey everyone and welcome to the Knowledge full of video series. And in today’s lecture we’ll be speaking about the VMware migrations. So still remember many years back when I was in my final year of college, many of my friends, they were doing even myself. I had done like three certifications specifically related to the VMware because VMware was quite a hot technology during the that time and many of the organizations actually required VMware centric knowledge and the fun of learning virtualization load balancing cloud was quite interesting during that time. However, since the introduction of AWS, many of the organizations slowly started to adopt AWS for the infrastructure and this also was the downfall of VMware, v center or Vir related technologies.

So it is important for a solutions architect to understand on what it takes for you to migrate from a VMware based resource to EC Two. So it might happen that you are working in an organization which is using VMware for the internal private cloud and they are now migrating to AWS. So what are the ways in which you can migrate the virtual machines from one technology to the AWS is important as a high level overuse concern. So we already discussed that nowadays many of the organizations are actually migrating from the on premise environments to EC Two. And when you talk about on premise, VMware is one of the important technologies that many of the organizations are using. So since VMware is one of the most used solutions for virtualization and private clouds in organizations, this topic has been introduced for the solutions architect exam.

So you have a V center on the left hand side where there is a virtual machine and now you want to import, or maybe during the migration phase, you want to import this machine to the EC to instance. So this is part of the migration phase. So if you want to do this, how will you achieve this is the criteria. So as a high level overview, whenever you want to migrate a VM from V Center to EC Two, there is a nice little plug in that allows us to do that. So if you see when you right click on the virtual machine, there is an option of migrate to EC Two. So when you click on migrate to EC Two you will be presented with similar type of a screen where you have to specify the region, the subnets as well as the instance type and the security group.

So once you specify these things and you click on migrate to EC Two, the entire virtual machine will be migrated from the V Center to the EC Two. So it takes some amount of time to do that. Now I actually decided not to show the practical demonstration because it would actually require me to set up the entire lab related to V Center and Vsphere. And instead of that, I’ll spend more time creating more quizzes that will help you in the exams. So in exams they will not ask you anything else other than these things that we have discussed. So the only criteria in exam is that you should know that VMware V center we can migrate with the help of the plugin from the VMware V center to the AWS.

So along with that, one important pointer for exams is that there is the AWS management portal for Vcenter, which allows customers to manage AWS resources from VMware Vcenter dashboard itself. So this is the VMware V Center dashboard and from the dashboard itself we can manage the AWS resources. Like we can start EC two instances we can stop EC two instances sense all those things we can do from the V Center dashboard itself.

5. AWS Server Migration Service

Hey everyone and welcome back. In today’s video we’ll be discussing about the AWS server migration service which is also referred as AWS SMS. Now in exams you will have to remember the acronyms because you might not really get the entire full form. Specifically in the answer section you will get either AWS SMS or AWS DMs. So you’ll have to remember the appropriate acronym and the full form. Now AWS Server Migration Service is basically an agent less service which makes it easier and faster for you to migrate thousands of onpremise workloads to AWS. Now there are two supported platforms. One is the VMware vsphere. And second is the Microsoft HyperV.

Now there are certain steps which are required for the migration to happen via the server migration service. Now the first thing that you need to do before any of this step can occur is to download the Server migration services image. Now let me quickly show you on how exactly it might look like. So I’m in my AWS management console and if you go to Services and if you type Server Migration Service, just click over here. Now you need to click on Get started. And now you see there are two connectors which are available as a template. One is for V center environment. So this is the OVA file and second is the VHD file.

So depending on the environment that you are using, you need to download this and you need to deploy within the respective environment. And due to the connector being present, this is also referred as the agentless service. So you don’t really need to install the agent within the specific VM. Now once you go ahead and deploy the specific OVA file or the VHD file, the first thing that you need to do is you have to schedule the migration job. So you can either schedule it immediately or you can specify the date and time where the entire migration job will initiate. Now what exactly that migration job will do? First thing that it will do is it will take a snapshot, then it will export the VM to the OVF template, then it will upload the VM decay to the s three bucket and then it will clean the snapshot.

So let me quickly show you this, otherwise it will become a little confusing here. So this is my VMware environment and I have a Kali Linux installed over here. Now the server migration service makes it easier for you to automate. Let’s say within your Vsphere you have thousands of VMs and you want to migrate all of them. So the entire automation, the entire part of scheduling becomes easier if you use a server migration service. However, if you have a VM you can definitely do it manually as well.You don’t really need a server migration service over here. So let’s assume that I have a VM over here. So this is based on Kali linux? Now you can go ahead and you can take a snapshot of this VM.

You see, I have multiple snapshots which are available over here. Now, the next step typically is to convert it to an OVF. So if you click on export to OVF, you have an option to export this VM to an OVF template. You don’t really need a server migration service to do the exportation. VMware has the built in capability to do it for you. All right, so let me quickly show you on how exactly it looks like after it is exported. So this is the directory and this is the exported file. Now, if you look here, this is the OVF format. Now OVF stands for open virtualization format. And this is the virtual disk image, which is basically referred as the VMDK file. Now, let’s do one thing. Let me just create one directory, call as one and I’ll show you how exactly it might look like.

So I’ll go to VMware. Let’s click on file and I’ll click on Export to OVF. Now I’ll go inside a directory one. Let’s give it a default file name and the save type is the OVF here. Let’s click on save. So now what it is doing is that it is exporting my virtual machine into a specific format. Now, if you go here, you see there is a VMDK file which is getting created. So this is the VMDK file which is referred within the slide. All right? So I hope now you’ll begin to understand what exactly it does. It takes a snapshot. It exports the VM to our OVF template. It uploads the VMDK file. Once our export is complete, that VMDK file is being uploaded to the S three bucket.

Then it will clean the snapshot. So this is part of the uploading. Third is converting because the VMDK file will not work out of the box. So you have to convert that VMDK file to the Amazon EBS snapshot. So once you convert it to an Eds snapshot, you can go ahead and delete the VMDK file from the S three bucket. And once you have a snapshot ready, you can go ahead and create an AMI. So, this is the high level overview about the server migration service. Again, in exams you will not get the technical aspect into the issues that one might face during the migration.