Readiness Phase readiness-phase
In this phase of the AEM as a Cloud Service Migration Journey, you familiarize yourself with AEM as a Cloud Service. You can review the notable changes introduced and understand what it takes to plan for a successful migration to the cloud.
The Story So Far story-so-far
The previous document, Getting Started with Moving to AEM as a Cloud Service, outlines a list of phases you must undergo so you can migrate to AEM as a Cloud Service. It also outlines the benefits of doing the migration.
Objective objective
This document helps you understand what factors you must consider so you can make sure that your AEM installation is ready to be moved to the cloud:
- Learn about notable changes and deprecated features
- Understand how to plan for the migration to AEM as a Cloud Service
Review the Notable Changes in the AEM as a Cloud Service Architecture notable-changes-in-aem-cloud-service-architecture
AEM as a Cloud Service brings many new features and possibilities for managing your AEM Projects.
Along with these improvements, several differences have been introduced between on-premise installations of AEM and Adobe Managed Services, compared to AEM as a Cloud Service.
The list of items in the below table is the subset of the changes most relevant for a migration to AEM as a Cloud Service. You can consult the full list of notable changes here.
When additional Development environments are added, all of them tie to the "dev" run mode.
The OSGi configurations are available in read-only mode for viewing through Developer Console through Cloud Manager
Reverse replication is not supported
Package Manager is accessible on all author instances but the packages that are going to be deployed must contain only mutable content ( for example: /content or /conf)
If you want to set up your own CDN, you must submit a request to Adobe Support for it to be approved.
If it is approved, the CDN points to Fastly and not to AEM instances in any environments.
Rethink these functionalities so you can offload them to Adobe Developer.
The recommended approach is to implement the strategies outlined here rather than relying on creating local usernames with passwords in AEM.
Not all workflow process steps are supported in AEMaaCS.
All the assets uploaded into AEM as a Cloud Service are going to be processed by the Asset Processing Service. For custom steps, see Post Processing Workflows on how to setup and configure post-processing workflows.
Completely understand and refactor the Oak Indexes before managing them in the code that you deploy.
The configurations must be managed as part of code and deployed through the Cloud Manager pipeline.
Deprecated Features deprecated-features
Adobe constantly evaluates product capabilities, to over time reinvent or replace older features with more modern alternatives to improve overall customer value, always under careful consideration of backward compatibility.
Adobe recommends that you consult Deprecated Features to familiarize yourself with the features and capabilities that are marked as deprecated in Experience Manager as a Cloud Service. See what the impact is for your AEM deployment.
Plan for a Review of your AEM Installation review-planning
After you have accustomed yourself with the changes introduced with AEM as a Cloud Service, it is time to start planning for a review of your existing installation. Doing so helps you gauge the level of changes required to move it to the cloud.
The following figure showcases key steps involved during the review phase:
Next, you explore what each of these steps means in detail.
Assessing Cloud Service Readiness assess-cloud-readiness
The first step is to assess your readiness to move from your existing AEM version to Cloud Service and determine areas that require refactoring to be compatible with AEM as a Cloud Service.
Undertake a comprehensive assessment of your current AEM source code against the notable changes and deprecated features to determine the level of effort expected in the transition journey.
The number of findings can directly influence the timelines and overall project success. Therefore, Adobe recommends that you uncover as much as possible so you can plan the delivery. Or, initiate the conversations so you can redesign any customizations required to be in line with AEM as a Cloud Service best practice.
Best Practice Analyzer
You can accelerate the assessment by running the Best Practices Analyzer against your current AEM version. Having a good understanding of how it works is key to speeding up your assessment planning.
You can read up on how it works by consulting the Best Practices Analyzer documentation.
Create a Cloud Readiness Assessment Report
The next step is creating a report based on all the knowledge gained so far. You create the report by generating Best Practices Analyzer reports from the Stage and Production instances, then upload them into Cloud Acceleration Manager for a digestible report of actionable items.
A typical report should contain these inputs:
- Documentation detailing the feature set of your particular AEM installation
- Details on your AEM custom configurations and code
- Production Dispatcher configurations
- CDN Configurations (if there are any)
Socialize the Report
After the Best Practices Analyzer reports are complete, share them with the relevant teams so you can confirm your findings and plan for your next steps. Depending on preference, you can also distribute a printed version of the report by using Print Preview.
Reviewing Resource Planning review-resource-planning
Once you have estimated the level of effort that is required to move to Cloud Service, you should identify resources, create a team, and map out roles and responsibilities for the transition process.
Establishing KPIs establish-kpis
If you have not established Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) previously, it is recommended to establish KPIs for your AEM implementation to help your team focus on what matters the most.
See Developing KPIs so you can learn how to choose the right KPIs for your business objectives.
What’s Next what-is-next
Once you understand the scope of the changes required to move to AEM as a Cloud Service, it’s time to Make your code and content cloud ready before actually performing the migration.
Additional Resources additional-resources
- Getting Started with Cloud Acceleration Manager - A comprehensive guide on how to use Cloud Acceleration Manager to speed up your move to the cloud.
- AEM as a Cloud Service: Introduction, Architecture, and Thinking Differently
- AEM a Cloud Service Home - For an overview of the Experience Manager as a Cloud Service documentation, start here.
- AEM as a Cloud Service Overview - This guide provides an overview of Experience Manager as a Cloud service, including an introduction, terminology, and architecture.
- Onboarding Journey- This guide provides a summary of how to get started with Experience Manager as a Cloud Service, including how to get access and set up your team.