> Markdown version of [/videos/196-aws-migration-within-3-months?t=837](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/196-aws-migration-within-3-months?t=837). Every page supports `.md` or `Accept: text/markdown`. Links point to the HTML versions so they work for humans too. Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md).

---

# AWS Migration within 3 months

A hardware crisis sparked an impossible goal. See how Around Home's CTO migrated an entire legacy data center to AWS in three months. Uncover their agile infrastructure secrets.

- **Speakers:** Steffen Heilmann
- **Event:** World Congress 2021
- **Published:** June 28, 2021
- **Duration:** 37:08
- **URL:** https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/196-aws-migration-within-3-months

## Summary

A late-night crisis over missing RAM in a physical data center was the breaking point for Around Home's CTO, triggering an ambitious plan to migrate their entire infrastructure to the cloud in just three months. To accomplish this seemingly impossible deadline, the engineering team applied agile practices to a traditionally waterfall infrastructure project. They focused strictly on the single goal of exiting the physical data center, intentionally deferring cloud-native refactoring and modernization elements to a later phase to ensure the migration did not suffer from scope creep.

By slicing the massive migration into manageable, risk-prioritized components, the team empowered developers through early automation and continuous feedback loops. The transition of their core 12-year-old legacy database, which had previously caused a system-wide failure during an all-at-once migration attempt, was successfully handled by meticulously cutting it into smaller segments and systematically moving less critical tables first. Crucial to maintaining momentum was the use of highly visible burndown charts that tracked remaining applications and servers, encouraging cross-functional collaboration when technical bottlenecks arose.

The success of the fast-paced migration hinged on securing stakeholder buy-in by reframing a technical necessity into clear business advantages. Instead of promising cost reductions—which rarely materialize immediately due to scalability buffering and subsequent feature additions—the CTO emphasized faster release cycles, improved testing bandwidth, and the auto-scaling capabilities needed to survive unpredictable traffic spikes from television ad campaigns. During the final cutover weekend, having a highly experienced engineer on standby as a dedicated reserve to tackle unforeseen roadblocks ensured the team stayed ahead of schedule with zero business disruption.

**Keywords:** cloud migration strategy, agile infrastructure planning, legacy database transition, data center exit strategy, risk-based prioritization, cross-functional engineering teams, internal stakeholder communication, developer productivity optimization, auto-scaling capabilities, infrastructure operations management, project burndown charts, hardware bottleneck resolution, technical debt management

## Chapters

1. **Overview of Around Home and their technical landscape** (00:03) — An overview of Around Home's business model and the structural intersection of business and technical operations.
1. **The hardware outage that triggered the rapid migration** (02:25) — How a late-night incident involving missing physical RAM motivated leadership to eliminate volatile on-premise hardware dependencies.
1. **Setting an agile three-month cloud migration goal** (05:30) — Establishing a strict operational deadline while applying agile principles to frame the entire migration as an iterative process.
1. **Technical setup and legacy architecture challenges** (08:46) — Analyzing the baseline data center setup which featured interdependent microservices alongside a complex Galera database cluster.
1. **Slicing the core legacy database for safe migration** (10:51) — Breaking apart a massive legacy database into manageable chunks to safely migrate high-risk legacy tables over time.
1. **Defining critical goals over early cloud-native transformation** (13:01) — Constraining the strategic focus to purely escaping the data center rather than attempting simultaneous cloud-native capability adoptions.
1. **Framing the cloud migration for business stakeholders** (13:57) — Positioning the infrastructure shift to executives as a primary driver for enhanced developer productivity instead of mere cost savings.
1. **Empowering engineering teams with technical autonomy** (18:10) — Entrusting the executing engineering teams with complete autonomy to establish robust infrastructure automation prior to moving legacy apps.
1. **Visualizing migration progress with physical burndown charts** (19:30) — Broadcasting remaining server metrics via a prominent physical burndown chart to increase transparency and foster cross-team problem solving.
1. **Executing the final database migration switchover weekend** (21:50) — Ensuring final cutover stability by deliberately over-provisioning testing databases and assigning dedicated reserve response engineers.
1. **Key retrospective learnings from the rapid infrastructure migration** (23:58) — Actionable takeaways around aggressive task slicing, avoiding scope creep, and maintaining early synchronization with core business units.
1. **Audience questions on cross-department alignment and game days** (26:29) — Techniques for involving application developers earlier through interactive sandbox game days and adapting proposals for non-technical departments.
1. **Audience questions on cloud security and operational capacity** (30:12) — Context on AWS platform data protection audits, operations resource scaling limitations, and strategic cloud provider selection variables.

## Related Moments

- [Executing massive cloud network migrations while maintaining live systems](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100128-the-golden-age-of-email-owning-the-inbox-in-the-age-of-ai) (from "The Golden Age of Email: Owning the Inbox in the Age of AI")
- [Solving architectural challenges during rapid public cloud migrations](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/238-the-journey-from-developer-to-devops-what-i-ve-learnt-along-the-way) (from "The journey from developer to devops - what i've learnt along the way")
- [Recognizing the social realities of technical migrations](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100164-the-migration-cookbook) (from "The Migration Cookbook")
- [Container migration and operational complexity challenges](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/812-building-reliable-serverless-applications-with-aws-cdk-and-testing) (from "Building Reliable Serverless Applications with AWS CDK and Testing")
- [Hiring passionate software engineers to tackle unprecedented scaling challenges](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100128-the-golden-age-of-email-owning-the-inbox-in-the-age-of-ai) (from "The Golden Age of Email: Owning the Inbox in the Age of AI")
- [Learning from failed upfront migration strategies](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/664-there-is-no-such-thing-as-future-proof-architecture-here-is-how-to-prepare-for-it) (from "There is no such thing as future-proof architecture! Here is how to prepare for it.")

## Related Articles

- [Navigating the AI Shift](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/629-navigating-the-ai-shift)
- [Dev Digest 120 - Apple and peers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/455-dev-digest-120-apple-and-peers)
- [What Are The Top Skills Required For Azure Developers?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/77-what-are-the-top-skills-required-for-azure-developers)
- [Why Your AI Tool Fails After the Demo](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/704-why-your-ai-tool-fails-after-the-demo)

## Related Jobs

- [Cloud Foundations Team](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/jobs/ext/1483289-cloud-foundations-team) at **GitHub**
- [Cloud Data Engineer (all genders)](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/jobs/48216-cloud-data-engineer-all-genders) at **msg**
- [Senior Engineer, Infrastructure Platform](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/jobs/ext/328836-senior-engineer-infrastructure-platform) at **Intercom, Inc.**
- [Senior Cloud Software Architect (all genders welcome) for our Intelligent Service Operations Hub](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/jobs/ext/1284556-senior-cloud-software-architect-all-genders-welcome-for-our-intelligent-service-operations-hub) at **Rosenxt Group**
- [Senior Cloud Software Architect (all genders welcome) for our Intelligent Service Operations Hub](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/jobs/ext/1693682-senior-cloud-software-architect-all-genders-welcome-for-our-intelligent-service-operations-hub) at **Rosenxt Group**
- [Software Engineer L2 - Cloud Infrastructure](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/jobs/ext/1282024-software-engineer-l2-cloud-infrastructure) at **Twilio**