Information on transfer of existing cloud accounts from AWS to Azure

One more thing: IP-range filtering will not be supported on the Azure version of the AIMMS Cloud Platform. We will contact the few customers using this today.

Jan-Willem van Crevel
AIMMS Cloud Platform

An update (make sure you read the original post):

• We encountered some setbacks and we now anticipate starting the transfer or customer accounts early October. We will only start account transfers after we have rehearsed this many times with test accounts and with AIMMS-owned accounts.
• As described earlier, please expect a few hours of downtime, scheduled at your convenience.
• The PRO portal will have a different URL on Azure (xxx.aimms.cloud) than on AWS (xxx.aimms.com). We will redirect for a few weeks, but users will need to change their bookmarks.
• The application databases will have different URL on Azure (xxx.aimms.cloud) than on AWS (xxx.aimms.com). We will redirect for a few weeks. The application databases will also have different usernames and passwords and this requires changes in the apps or configuration files. After making these changes app developers will have to republish the apps.

And another update: we are investigating ways to hide the application database username issue from the app developers. That would reduce hassle for you app developer guys. No promises yet.

Jan-Willem

Status update 1 November:

• As I wrote before, we want to get the technology right and not feel bound by a deadline. We are not yet ready to start transferring customer accounts.
• We are currently ‘commissioning’ our automation for operating the Azure infrastructure, together with our partner Intercept. This means testing, changing, testing, changing, etcetera. Until it passes all our tests.
• And then we will start commissioning our automation for migrating accounts.
• My current best estimate is that we will start transferring customer accounts towards the end of November, early December. And we will be in touch with you before the actual transfer takes place.

Jan-Willem

Status update 14 December:

• We have tested all known functionalities on our development environment thoroughly until all tests were successful. Currently we are finalizing the account transfer scripts as to automate part of the process. Both EU and US production environments are now being set up and our first transfers on there will be internal cloud accounts - hopefully the first one will be done before Christmas. 
• The last checks in the context of information security are being performed.
• A list of all the to-be-transferred accounts and related persons we will be contacting to start informing personally is being completed. For some accounts we will need to check if we have the correct contact details noted - we will check in with these accounts somewhere in the next week.
• We now expect the total downtime of your platform for the actual transfer to be a few hours at the most. The actual transfer date will be planned based on a pre-migration call we will have with you, in which we will gather information on downtime possibilities (alongside other important details). We will always check this date with you in close consultation and before transferring. An invitation to the pre-migration call will follow as soon as we have performed our first successful internal transfers.
• For every successful transfer we will be planting 50 trees  !

Please feel free to contact us (through here, through mail roxanna.bindenga@aimms.com or through a support ticket) if you have any questions or concerns.

Hi there, I would like to give you another update on our 'move to Azure’ project:

Our current forecast for being ‘customer-ready’ is February 4. Turned out we needed more testing and tweaking of the code, more time to verify we have all the security measures in place and more time to organize the support collaboration with our Azure Managed Service partner, Intercept. We remain cautious, prioritizing quality over time.

As a result we expect to start moving the first accounts in February, but we will set dates with each of you. And I trust impact for you, our cloud customers, has been well described by Roxanna in the post above.

Please continue to bring any questions you may have to us.

Hi there, we have been quiet for a few weeks as we were addressing some setbacks in getting the Azure version of our cloud platform ‘customer ready'. Current status:

• Production environments are running reliably and feature complete, including the information security arrangements. 
• We successfully tested our disaster recovery procedure, including restore of the entire platform and all the data on it.
• We are conducting performance comparisons for a couple of applications, after we saw a slower app launch in one case (which we were able to fix). Expect slight differences in performance, sometimes AWS faster, sometimes Azure faster. We aim to fix all significant performance regressions.
• For transferring existing accounts from AWS to Azure our automation has been completed, successfully tested and the first (AIMMS) account has been transferred to Azure successfully.
• We will transfer all AIMMS accounts, including the ones used for demos. When we are satisfied with the reliability and performance, we will declare ‘customer ready’ and start transferring customer accounts (in close consultation of course).
• We remain cautious, prioritizing quality over time.

Please contact us if you have questions.

A brief update:

• It has taken us longer than expected to get our automatic migration tooling stable enough, but now we are there!
• We have already transferred 12 accounts and there is now real 'workload’ on the Azure version of our cloud platform.
• Our transfer team will contact cloud customers individually to prepare and schedule the migrations.

That's it for now.

Regards, Jan-Willem van Crevel, AIMMS

An update on our transfer of accounts from AWS to Azure:

• We are in 'full swing’.
• To date we transferred 28 accounts from AWS to Azure, using our automatic tools for that.
• Our 'white glove transfer team’ is contacting customers one-by-one to prepare for their migration.
• We are aiming to have all accounts transferred by the end of September (2022).

And of course all new cloud customers are now started directly on Azure.

Let me know if you have any questions,

Jan-Willem van Crevel, AIMMS Cloud Platform

And then one more and final update on our ‘AWS to Azure move’:

• On January 26, 17:14 CET we completed the transfer of the 114-th and last cloud account from AWS to Azure, including having moved 100+ application databases. 
• Thanks to the loyal support of our customers and the commitment of the Ninja's in our ‘white glove customer transfer team’ it was overall a smooth transfer, with 95%+ accounts transferred without any significant distraction for our users and customers.
• Only in a few isolated cases did we encounter issues and with the help of our customers, our User Support specialists and our very skilled and committed Azure partner Intercept these were all resolved, usually quickly. 
• We are pleased to see that our Azure cloud platform has proven at least as stable and reliable as our AWS platform.
• We are also pleased to experience the benefits of outsourcing the monitoring and maintenance of the Azure services and infrastructure to the specialists of Intercept. This is further increasing our cloud service security and reliability. And it gives us room to focus on our own code :-). 

That's it. Closing this book and looking forward to meet you elsewhere.

Jan-Willem