In this project you take a company's servers and write a one-page plan for moving them to the cloud: what moves first, what each part runs on, how it survives failure, and who keeps it safe.
It draws on every topic in this skill, especially Service models, Deployment models, Regions and zones, Scaling and elasticity and Shared responsibility.
What you need
A text editor or a document. The plan should fit on one page. There is no single right answer; the solution shows one good plan and the reasons behind it.
The company
A clinic booking company runs everything in a server room in its office:
| What | Runs on | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Public booking website | 2 Linux servers | Busy on Monday mornings, quiet at night |
| Booking database | 1 Linux server | Holds patients' names, phone numbers and appointments |
| Staff email and documents | 1 Windows server | 40 staff |
| Nightly reports | Runs on the database server at 2 am | Takes an hour; nobody minds if it is late |
| Backups | A USB disk, changed by hand on Fridays | Kept in the same room |
Other facts:
- The office lease ends in 18 months.
- The law says patient data must stay in the country. The chosen cloud provider has a region there with three zones.
- The site went down for a day last year when the server room's air conditioning failed.
- There is one engineer, who also handles the office laptops.
The brief
Write a plan with these sections, a few lines each:
- What moves, and in what order.
- Service model for each part, with a reason.
- Deployment model, now and after the move.
- Region and zones.
- Scaling.
- Who secures what: three things the provider will handle, and at least five the company must.
- Cost: two ways to keep the bill down.
- Risks: two things that could go wrong during the move.
Steps
Read the brief for clues
Each fact about the company points at a decision. Before writing, list what each one tells you: the 18-month lease, the law about patient data, the air-conditioning failure, the single engineer, the Monday mornings, the backups in the same room.
Show a solution
- Lease ends in 18 months: a deadline. Everything must move, and in stages.
- Patient data must stay in the country: use the region in the country.
- Air conditioning took the site down: everything is in one place. Use several zones.
- One engineer: prefer services the provider runs (PaaS, SaaS, managed databases), so there is less to patch and look after.
- Busy Monday mornings: scale out on demand.
- Backups in the same room: a fire or theft loses both the data and the backups. Back up to another zone or region automatically.
Write the plan
Use your list to write each section of the brief. Keep each section short; a reader should get the whole plan in two minutes.
Show a solution
1. What moves, and in what order First email and documents, which are the simplest and least risky. Next backups, so the data is safe off-site early. Then the database and website together, since they depend on each other. Reports last. All done within 12 months, leaving 6 months of margin before the lease ends.
2. Service models
- Email and documents: SaaS. A hosted email and office suite; there is no reason to run an email server.
- Booking database: PaaS, a managed database. The provider patches it, backs it up and runs a standby copy.
- Booking website: PaaS or containers on a managed platform. The engineer deploys code and does not patch servers.
- Nightly reports: serverless, a scheduled job on a serverless container service that runs for an hour and costs nothing the rest of the day. Serverless functions usually stop after 10 to 15 minutes, too short for an hour-long report.
- Backups: built into the managed database, plus object storage for files.
3. Deployment model Hybrid during the move, with the office and the cloud connected by a VPN. Public cloud once the server room closes.
4. Region and zones The region in the country, for the law on patient data and closeness to users. The website runs in at least two zones behind a load balancer, and the database has a standby copy in a second zone, so one building failing does not stop bookings.
5. Scaling The website scales out automatically: 2 copies at least, more on Monday mornings, back to 2 at night. It must be stateless, with sessions kept outside the servers. The database is sized for Monday mornings and scaled up if it needs more.
6. Who secures what The provider: the data centres and hardware, the hypervisors, and patching the managed database and platform. The company: who can see patient data; staff accounts with MFA; least-privilege permissions for the engineer and the application; keeping the database reachable only from the website, not the internet; keeping access keys out of code; turning on encryption and audit logs.
7. Cost Set a budget with alerts before anything else. Once usage is steady after a few months, commit to one or three years for the database and the two always-on web servers. Delete the VPN and office servers as soon as each part has moved.
8. Risks
- Data lost or out of step during the database move. Rehearse the move with a copy first, and move during the quietest time, a weekend night.
- One engineer doing everything. Budget for outside help or training, and write down each step so the work is not in one person's head.
Check it works
Check your plan against these points. A good plan:
- Keeps patient data in the in-country region.
- Runs the website and database across more than one zone.
- Moves backups away from the building where the data is.
- Prefers managed services, because there is only one engineer.
- Scales the website out, and says it must be stateless to do so.
- Leaves access control, MFA and network rules with the company, not the provider.
- Finishes before the lease ends, with some margin.
- Fits on one page.
If your plan puts the database on a virtual server instead (IaaS), that can be a fair choice, but it should say who patches it and how backups and the standby copy work, since the company now owns those jobs.
Going further
- Add a section on what happens if the whole region fails. What would it cost to have a copy in a second region, and is it worth it for this company?
- Draw the final setup: users, load balancer, website copies in two zones, the database and its standby, and the backups.
- Come back to this plan after the AWS skills and name the actual AWS service for each part.