Cloud Migration using AWS Cloud-based Services

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 Cloud computing is the most trending technology that provides access to computing services over the internet which is mostly based on pay per use model. The characteristics of cloud computing offer elasticity and cost efficiency to the adopting business sectors such as healthcare, supply chain, etc.  This paper discusses Cloud based services offered by Amazon Web Services. The functional and non-functional requirements that a company generally needs are documented. A scalable cloud solution from AWS [3] supporting those requirements is described along with its benefits and disadvantages.

A.      Functional Requirements

The system requires access to company records whenever needed irrespective of the location of the user. It should allow the users to access, update and manage records. The unique requirements of an organization for using cloud services are enlisted below. AWS Cloud services and resources are capable of fulfilling each of them.

  • Intercloud Connectivity- The system requires a virtual network for customers with several connectivity for remote customer network. AWS Direct Connect has a high connection capacity.
  • Security- The system needs to protect its sensitive information, identities, apps and devices on the network. Core security is required for protection, data access and data locality. It is a shared responsibility between the company and AWS.
  • Reporting requirements include monitoring and tracking progress, communication, documenting the lessons learned, accountability to all the users who benefit from the services.
  • Database Access-The company can maintain full control of its content and access to it. AWS services and resources shall be helpful.
  • Integration on demand

B.      Non-Functional Requirements

  • Scalability- The cloud should support increasing or decreasing IT resources as needed by the company.
  • Cost- The cloud should increase workforce productivity with decreased adoption time thus making the system cost effective.
  • Usability-Remote users should be able to use the system and its resources, as well as access the data securely and efficiently.

Architecture Diagram

VMware virtualization software shall allow multiple copies of the same OS to run in the same machine. It will facilitate modernization of existing apps and creating new apps. It will leverage the company’s infrastructure across different apps. Majorly, it will accelerate the app operations with network and security virtualization for cloud and data center. 

AWS Direct Connect service can be leveraged to establish a dedicated network between AWS and company’s data center, along with a highly available DNS service Amazon Route 53. This cloud DNS service shall provide the company a reliable and cost-effective way to route end users to internet apps. vSphere replication tool shall backup and restore the environment on AWS. It is a hypervisor asynchronous replication solution that enables disaster recovery and data protection for virtual machines in the company’s environment. 

Amazon Route 53 health check monitors hosts with private IP addresses that are publicly routable on the internet. It monitors the health and performance of the web servers and other resources of the company. The health check in this case shall check the health of the web servers. 

AWS Cloud Architecture


The health check shall be performed with AWS Lambda and Amazon CloudWatch. AWS CloudFormation shall be used to perform TCP, HTTP and HTTPS health checks. The architecture is shown in Figure 1 and process is illustrated in the Figure 2 below. The company shall enter parameters and CloudFormation shall perform the health check. It will create resources from stack template and upon launch, health check is done on route 53 console. Lambda function is invoked by CloudWatch events and the function shall push a metric to CloudWatch. The function will send logs to CloudWatch which provide information about health check status and the reasons for its success or failure. Then the CoudWatch will create an alarm which Route 53 will use to determine health status of the resource. The main objective of using the services are
  • AWS lambda will perform TCP/HTTP/HTTPS health check and push metrics and logs to CloudWatch.
  • Amazon CloudWatch Events will invoke Lambda function.
  • Route 53 will create health check to monitor the resource through CloudWatch alarm.
  • IAM will create a role which Lambda uses to perform health checks.
AWS Services


With the proposed model, the company will be well-equipped to accommodate the growing base of remote workers and people from whom data is collected, with AWS Cloud. Remote devices can be set up for users and the company pays only for the workspaces it launches. This removes the difficulty of managing hardware inventory, software version upgrades, compatibility, patches and virtual infrastructure. The major benefits of cloud [1] for the target healthcare company are
  • On-demand feature provides access to computing and storage facilities for large records.
  • Records can be digitized.
  • Numerous virtual machines can be created easily including storage space, software functionality and computing resources. 
However, cloud computing is subject to technological disadvantages like data lock-in, errors, unpredictability of performance, data transfer bottlenecks. Due to vast existence of OS, database models, protocols, etc., interoperability is a major issue in cloud computing. 
With AWS Route 53, the company does not have to pay upfront fee or commit to number of queries for the domain. The charges are minimalistic for pay per use. CloudWatch service comes at a price of metric per month. AWS Lambda offers free usage tier for 1M requests per month and 400,000GB-seconds of compute time per month. IAM can be managed via IAM APIs and its roles are free of charge. All services’ costs consolidated together will lead to a feasible solution for the target company.
The overall architecture shall improve the business operations of the adopting organization. It was found that connectivity needed to be established among on-premises DNS infrastructure and AWS and the best way to achieve that was trough Route 53. Domains hosted within on-premises DNS infrastructure were configured as forwarding rules in Route 53 Resolver. Rules would be triggered when a query is made to one of those domains and will attempt to forward DNS requests to DNS servers configured along with the rules.

REFERENCES
[1] Parekh, M., Saleena B., (2015), Designing a Cloud based Framework for HealthCare System and applying Clustering techniques for Region Wise Diagnosis. 2nd International Symposium on Big Data and Cloud Computing (ISBCC’15), doi: 10.1016/j.procs.2015.04.029 
[2] Sultan, N., (2014). Making use of cloud computing for healthcare provision: Opportunities and challenges. International Journal of Information Management, Volume 34, Issue 2, Pages 177-184, ISSN 0268-4012, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2013.12.011.
[3] Varia, J., Mathe, S., (2014), Overview of Amazon Web Services. Amazon Web Services, http://cabibbo.dia.uniroma3.it/asw-2014-2015/altrui/AWS_Overview.pdf


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