OVH to AWS Migration in 2025 – A Step-by-Step Guide

Migrating from OVH to AWS can unlock significant benefits in scalability, reliability, and innovation for your business. OVHcloud (a popular European hosting and cloud provider) offers solid services, but AWS global infrastructure and rich feature set make it a compelling upgrade for growing companies. OVH to AWS migration is a strategic move: by transitioning to AWS, organizations tap into a broader range of cloud services and a pay-as-you-go model that can optimize costs and performance. In this guide, we’ll explore why migrating from OVH to AWS is advantageous, how to plan a smooth migration strategy, steps for execution, and tips to address common challenges. Our thesis is simple – migrating to AWS can elevate your infrastructure’s scalability, security, and efficiency, provided you plan properly and leverage the right tools. Let’s dive into this comprehensive step-by-step guide to ensure your OVH to AWS migration is seamless and successful.

Why Migrate from OVHcloud to AWS? (Benefits and Differences)

OVH vs AWS – what’s the difference?

In comparing these two cloud providers, several key distinctions stand out. AWS provides a far larger ecosystem of cloud services than OVH. In fact, AWS offers over 200 fully featured services ranging from basic compute and storage to advanced analytics and AI, whereas OVHcloud’s service catalog is more limited. AWS’s global presence is also unparalleled – it operates in dozens of regions with multiple availability zones (data centers) each, ensuring you can deploy applications closer to users worldwide for low latency and high availability. By contrast, OVHcloud, while significant in Europe, has a more regional footprint (with 32 data centers globally as of 2021).

Another major factor is scalability and reliability. AWS is built with a multi-Availability Zone architecture for redundancy; you can easily distribute workloads across multiple data centers so that an outage in one does not take your application offline. OVH users have learned the importance of this the hard way – for example, a 2021 fire in an OVH data center disrupted millions of websites (including government and banking sites) by knocking an entire location offline. This kind of single-point failure is much less likely in AWS’s cloud where best practices encourage high-availability deployments across zones and regions. In short, AWS’s infrastructure is designed to be resilient, giving you peace of mind about uptime.

Performance is another consideration. AWS’s cutting-edge hardware options (latest-generation CPUs, GPUs, high-speed networking) and global Content Delivery Network can improve application speed. Many businesses migrating have seen significant performance gains – for instance, in one case an e-commerce site moved from OVH to AWS and achieved page load times under 1 second at peak traffic after migration. AWS’s ability to auto-scale resources on-demand means your application can handle traffic spikes easily, something that might require manual intervention or be impossible with fixed OVH servers.

Let’s talk support and ecosystem. AWS has a vast community and a trove of documentation and training. As an AWS user, you benefit from well-structured documentation and a responsive support system. OVH does offer support, but AWS’s support (especially with Business or Enterprise support plans) is often praised for its speed and cloud expertise. Additionally, because AWS is the market leader (with about 33% of global cloud market share as of 2023, there’s a large talent pool of AWS-certified engineers and a vibrant community. This means finding help or solutions for AWS issues is typically easier than for more niche platforms like OVHcloud.

Lastly, consider pricing models. OVH generally provides fixed hosting plans (e.g., a dedicated server for a set monthly fee), which can be cost-effective for predictable workloads but less flexible. AWS, on the other hand, uses a pay-as-you-go model – you pay only for what you use, which can be highly efficient. For example, AWS provides a variety of infrastructure services on-demand, available in seconds, with a pay-as-you-go model. This means you can dynamically scale down in off-peak times to save money, something not feasible with a static OVH server that you pay for regardless of usage. AWS also offers pricing options like reserved instances or savings plans for additional discounts, and even free tiers or credits for new users. In contrast, while OVH’s pricing can sometimes be lower at face value for equivalent hardware, you might be paying for capacity you’re not fully using. Many companies find that by moving to AWS and optimizing their cloud usage, they actually reduce overall IT costs – for example, eliminating on-premise hardware investments and maintenance saved money when shifting from OVH to AWS.

In summary, migrating from OVH to AWS is often about accessing greater flexibility, a wider array of managed services, and world-class scalability and reliability. AWS’s extensive global cloud, coupled with its huge service ecosystem and strong support, empowers businesses to innovate faster. If your goal is to grow without infrastructure constraints, AWS offers a clear advantage. Next, we’ll look at how to plan your migration to minimize risks and maximize these benefits.

Key AWS advantages over OVHcloud

• Global Infrastructure & Redundancy: AWS spans multiple regions and Availability Zones (data centers), enabling high availability (e.g., deploying across AZs to avoid downtime). OVHcloud has fewer global regions, which can limit redundancy options – a single data center issue at OVH can cause major outages.
• Extensive Services Portfolio: AWS’s service range (compute, storage, databases, analytics, AI, etc.) is unmatched, allowing you to replace or upgrade OVH setups with modern, managed AWS services. This broad ecosystem means AWS can likely support every need as you scale, from serverless functions to machine learning, which are beyond OVH’s offerings.
• Pay-as-You-Go Pricing & Optimization: AWS’s usage-based pricing means you only pay for resources you consume. You can auto-scale down to save costs during low demand and use tools to monitor spending. OVH’s fixed pricing might seem cheaper but lacks this flexibility – over-provisioning on OVH means wasted spend. With AWS, smart architecture can actually lower TCO (some users report ~30% TCO reduction after moving from OVH to AWS). Plus, AWS provides cost management tools (budgets, alerts) to prevent surprises.
• Security & Compliance: AWS is known for its robust security, offering features like encryption, IAM (Identity and Access Management), and compliance certifications for industries (GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, etc.). While OVHcloud also invests in security, AWS’s scale means dedicated teams and advanced services (AWS Shield, GuardDuty, etc.) guarding your infrastructure. If compliance is a concern, AWS likely already adheres to the standards you need.

By understanding these differences, it becomes clear why so many organizations choose to migrate to AWS for a more scalable and future-proof cloud infrastructure. Now that we know the “why,” let’s focus on the “how” – planning a successful OVH to AWS migration strategy.

Planning Your OVH to AWS Migration Strategy

A successful migration starts with meticulous planning. Rushing into cloud migration without a solid plan is risky – Gartner research found that 83% of data migration projects either fail or run over budget. To avoid becoming part of that statistic, you’ll need a well-defined OVH to AWS migration plan. This section guides you through the crucial planning steps.

Assess Your Current Environment: Begin with a thorough audit of your existing OVH infrastructure. What servers, applications, and databases are you running? What are their specifications and performance metrics? Identify any dependencies between systems – for example, your web application might rely on a database or a file storage that also needs moving. Documenting everything in your OVH setup will help map each component to an AWS solution. OVH might be providing you virtual machines, bare-metal servers, or managed services; list them out. Also, note your usage patterns (peak traffic times, seasonal variations) and pain points (e.g., is the OVH server maxing out CPU or memory?). A detailed inventory and baseline performance report will inform your migration choices on AWS. (Pro tip: AWS offers Migration Hub and AWS Application Discovery Service tools to assist in discovering and assessing your current workloads.)

Define Clear Goals and Requirements: Next, be specific about what you aim to achieve by migrating to AWS. Common goals include: improving scalability (auto-scaling to handle traffic spikes), enhancing reliability (eliminate single points of failure), reducing page load times, strengthening security, or optimizing costs. Setting quantifiable objectives will guide your strategy. For example, you might set a goal to handle 2x current traffic without performance degradation, or to cut infrastructure costs by 20% in the next year. Knowing your targets helps determine the right AWS architecture. If cost optimization is a goal, you’ll plan to utilize AWS cost management features from the start. If performance is key, you might plan to use AWS Global Accelerator or CloudFront CDN to speed up global access. Establishing these objectives early ensures your migration delivers the desired business outcomes.

Choose a Migration Approach (The 6 R’s): Cloud migration strategies are often described by the “6 R’s” – Rehost, Replatform, Refactor, Repurchase, Retire, and Retain. For an OVH to AWS migration, the most common approaches are:

• Rehosting (Lift-and-Shift): This is often the quickest path – you take your applications as-is on OVH and move them to AWS equivalent servers. For example, if you have an OVH VM running Ubuntu and Apache, you’d launch an EC2 instance on AWS with similar specs and move the data and application over. AWS Application Migration Service can help automate this by replicating your OVH servers (provided you can install an agent on them) to AWS in real-time, greatly simplifying lift-and-shift. Rehosting doesn’t require code changes, so it’s relatively fast. The downside is you might not immediately take advantage of cloud-native features, but you can always optimize later.
• Replatforming: A middle-ground approach where you make minimal changes to use more of AWS’s managed services. For instance, you might move your web server to EC2 but opt to use Amazon RDS for the database instead of running MySQL on a VM, or use Amazon S3 for file storage instead of storing files on the server. Replatforming requires a bit of tweaking but can yield immediate benefits (managed services handle a lot of heavy lifting). If your OVH setup used a LAMP stack, you could replatform by using AWS’s managed Linux AMIs, RDS for MySQL, and perhaps AWS Elastic Beanstalk to manage application deployment.
• Refactoring (or Redesigning): This involves re-architecting your application to be cloud-native. It’s the most resource-intensive approach (in terms of development effort) but can bring the biggest long-term payoff. For example, breaking a monolithic app into microservices, or shifting to serverless with AWS Lambda, or containerizing apps and using Amazon EKS/ECS. If your OVH environment has many limitations or you anticipate massive scaling, refactoring during migration might make sense. However, many businesses choose to first lift-and-shift to AWS, then refactor gradually once on AWS and stable.

Deciding on the approach depends on factors like timeline, budget, and how modern your applications are. For most OVH to AWS migrations, a phased approach works best: rehost quickly to AWS to minimize disruption, then incrementally replatform or refactor to leverage more AWS benefits.

Mapping OVH Services to AWS Services: As part of planning, create a mapping of what AWS services will replace or host each component currently on OVH. For example: OVH VPS -> AWS EC2 instance; OVH Managed Database -> Amazon RDS; OVH Object Storage -> Amazon S3; OVH Load Balancer -> AWS Elastic Load Balancing, etc. If you have an OVH bare-metal dedicated server, you might map it to a specific EC2 instance type (AWS has instance types for compute-optimized, memory-optimized, etc., so choose one that matches your workload). Also plan your target AWS architecture: design your VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) network – subnets, security groups, and consider multi-AZ deployment for high availability. Don’t forget to plan for identity and access management: in AWS you’ll use IAM roles and policies to control access instead of whatever custom access you had on OVH.

Address Compliance and Security Early: If your data is sensitive or you operate under regulations, ensure your AWS plan accounts for that. AWS has regions in Europe (if data residency in EU is required to replace OVH’s EU servers) and offers encryption and extensive compliance certifications. As part of planning, decide on encryption for data at rest in AWS (S3 buckets, EBS volumes, databases can all be encrypted) and in transit. Familiarize yourself with any compliance reports you might need – AWS Artifact can provide many compliance documents. It’s wise to design your AWS environment following the AWS Well-Architected Framework principles, especially the Security and Reliability pillars, from the get-go.

Set a Realistic Timeline and Milestones: Migration doesn’t happen overnight (especially if you have large datasets or critical apps). Create a timeline with milestones – e.g.,
Week 1-2: assessment and design;
Week 3: AWS environment set up;
Week 4-6: perform data migration and testing in AWS;
Week 7: cutover go-live. Include a buffer for unexpected issues.

Also decide on a migration window for final cutover – ideally during a low-traffic period to minimize impact in case of hiccups. Communicate with stakeholders about potential brief downtime or changes during migration.

Backup and Prepare Rollback Plans: Before migrating, ensure you have current backups of all OVH data (databases, file systems, configurations). Although AWS is reliable, you want the ability to fall back to OVH or re-import data if something goes wrong in transit. Part of planning is mitigating risks – for each migration step, consider a rollback strategy if possible (e.g., keep OVH server running until AWS version is confirmed working). Having a safety net will give you confidence to proceed.

Assemble Your Team and Tools: Determine who will carry out the migration. Do you have in-house cloud engineers or will you use an AWS Partner or consultant? Many companies leverage AWS migration consulting services to ensure best practices are followed – this can be valuable if your team lacks AWS experience. If doing it in-house, assign roles: e.g., one person handles networking setup, another focuses on data migration, etc. Gather tools you’ll use: AWS CLI for scripting, perhaps AWS DataSync if you need to sync data from an OVH server to AWS storage, and monitoring tools to compare performance before/after.

By completing these planning steps, you set a strong foundation for a smooth migration. Thorough planning and assessment mitigate the risks of surprises later. As noted earlier, migrations often fail due to poor planning or unclear objectives. Your goal is to be in the successful minority that migrates on time and on budget. In the next section, we’ll delve into specific challenges you might face during the move (like moving large amounts of data or avoiding downtime) and how to tackle them.

(Need guidance on multi-cloud migrations? Check out our guide on GCP to AWS Migration – A Step-by-Step Guide for 2025 to see how we handle transitioning from other providers.)

Common Migration Challenges & Concerns (and How to Overcome Them)

Migrating from OVH to AWS can raise a number of common questions and concerns. It’s normal to worry about things like downtime, data loss, cost overruns, or technical compatibility when moving such a major workload. In this section, we address the FAQs and pain points that IT teams often have, along with strategies to mitigate them.

How can I minimize downtime during the OVH to AWS migration?

Downtime is a top concern, especially if you run customer-facing applications. To minimize downtime, plan for a staged migration or use replication tools. One effective approach is performing an initial full data copy followed by incremental syncs. For example, you could use AWS DataSync or rsync to copy your data from OVH to AWS while your OVH environment is still live. AWS DataSync can connect to your OVH server (via NFS, SMB, or even S3 if using OVH Object Storage) and transfer data efficiently over the Internet or a VPN. After the bulk of data is copied, keep the service running on OVH and periodically sync the deltas (changes). When it’s time to switch, you’ll have very little data left to update. Additionally, if you can tolerate a brief read-only period, you could freeze changes on OVH (e.g., disable new content creation) during the final sync.

For migrating virtual machines with minimal downtime, consider the AWS Application Migration Service (MGN). It allows you to install an agent on your source OVH servers which replicates the server continuously to AWS. You can then “cut over” to the AWS instance in a controlled fashion. Many users have reported that using such replication tools results in downtime as low as just a reboot or a few minutes for final switchover.

Also, schedule your final cutover during off-peak hours (overnight or weekend) to minimize user impact. If your application setup allows it, you can even run both OVH and AWS environments in parallel for a short time and gradually redirect users to AWS (this is a blue-green deployment approach). The key is testing – do multiple trial runs of the migration in a staging environment so you know how long it takes and can script/automate steps to be faster. With good planning, it’s possible to migrate with near-zero downtime, as the Romexsoft case proved (they had no downtime during migration).

What’s the best way to transfer large volumes of data (e.g., terabytes of files or databases)?

Transferring large data sets from OVH to AWS can be challenging if you have limited bandwidth or strict time windows. A 15 TB file repository, for instance (similar to what one user on Reddit had when asking about OVH to AWS migration), would take a very long time over a typical internet connection. Fortunately, AWS provides solutions for bulk data transfer: AWS Snowball is a service where Amazon ships you a physical storage device (usually a rugged suitcase-sized appliance). You connect it to your network, load it with data, and ship it back to AWS. They will then import that data into your AWS environment (into S3, Glacier, etc.). Snowball can move tens of terabytes quickly without tying up your network. In fact, Snowball Edge devices can transfer up to 80 TB each, and AWS even has Snowmobile (a truck-sized storage) for petabyte-scale migrations. If time is critical and you have 10+ TB of data, using Snowball can be the optimal way – you avoid slow upload speeds and bypass the internet. Do note there’s a lead time (waiting for the device, shipping, etc.), so plan accordingly.

If your data size is smaller or network speeds are decent, you can use multi-threaded uploads to S3 or tools like AWS CLI to sync data. AWS’s global network backbone might allow relatively fast transfers if you’re in a region near an AWS data center. Enable compression where possible to reduce data size during transfer. For databases, you could perform logical backups (dumps) and transfer those, or use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) for live database migration with ongoing replication until cutover.

Will migrating to AWS increase my costs? What about OVH vs AWS pricing differences?

Cost is a valid concern. OVH is known for affordable hosting (especially for dedicated servers with unmetered traffic in some plans), whereas AWS’s on-demand pricing can initially seem higher. However, whether AWS ends up costing more or less depends on how you optimize your AWS usage. It’s not uncommon for businesses to reduce total cost of ownership by moving to AWS, by taking advantage of AWS’s flexibility and eliminating on-premise/legacy expenses. For example, AWS’s pay-per-use model means you can shut down non-production servers when not in use (saving money), scale down resources during off-hours, and right-size instances to exactly your needs. On OVH, if you rented a big dedicated server “just in case,” you were paying for that capacity 24/7 regardless of usage. On AWS, you could run smaller instances most of the time and automatically scale up only during heavy load.

There are also AWS cost optimization opportunities: using Reserved Instances or Savings Plans can cut compute costs by 30-60% if you commit to 1-3 year usage (similar to how OVH gives discounts on longer contracts). AWS provides Cost Explorer and AWS Budgets to track and alert on spending. By monitoring your cloud usage, you can avoid surprises. It’s reported that many companies initially overspend due to lack of governance, but by implementing tagging and regular reviews, costs can be kept in check.

One specific pricing difference: data transfer fees. AWS charges for data egress (data leaving AWS to the internet), while some OVH plans have unlimited bandwidth. If your application serves a lot of data to users, you’ll want to architect wisely to minimize egress costs (for instance, using CloudFront CDN, which reduces outgoing traffic costs and improves speed). You might also consider AWS’s special discounted data transfer plans if applicable. On the flip side, AWS often turns capital expenses into operational ones – you’re not managing hardware or paying for power/cooling, etc., which OVH might have rolled into their price. Also, factor in productivity gains: AWS managed services (like RDS databases, Lambda, etc.) offload maintenance tasks, potentially saving man-hours and allowing your team to focus on growth.

To ease the cost concern, start with AWS’s pricing calculator to estimate your monthly costs based on anticipated usage. Compare that to your OVH bills. And remember to include the value of improved uptime and performance – an outage on OVH might save money on paper but could cost your business in lost revenue or reputation. AWS’s reliability can be worth the premium. Moreover, new AWS customers and startups can often get free credits (e.g., through AWS Activate for startups, or other programs) – these credits can significantly offset costs in the initial months.

In short, AWS pricing is highly granular and offers many ways to save. Many organizations find that by leveraging AWS’s cost tools and adopting a cloud-native mindset (pay for what you use), they can run on AWS very cost-competitively. And you gain the scalability and performance benefits at the same time.

Is AWS secure enough for my data? How do I ensure compliance after migrating?

Security is a top priority for AWS. AWS operates under a shared responsibility model: AWS secures the underlying cloud infrastructure (physical data centers, networking, hardware, etc.), and you are responsible for securing what you put in the cloud (your OS, applications, data, and user access). In practice, AWS provides a wealth of security tools to help you fulfill your side of the responsibility. You can use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to strictly control who (or what services) can access your resources. AWS integrates encryption easily – you can enable encryption at rest for databases, storage, and use AWS Key Management Service (KMS) to manage encryption keys. In transit, AWS services support SSL/TLS, and you can enforce HTTPS for your applications. There are advanced services like AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) to protect web apps, and Amazon GuardDuty to intelligently monitor for threats.

Comparatively, OVH offers security measures too, but AWS’s scale means it invests heavily in cutting-edge security (for example, AWS has dedicated teams watching for vulnerabilities 24/7 and routinely achieves compliance certifications globally). AWS is compliant with numerous standards – PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, SOC1/2/3, ISO 27001 – if you have specific regulatory needs, AWS likely has you covered. You should, of course, architect your AWS environment to maintain compliance (e.g., use AWS Config and Security Hub to continuously audit your setup). AWS also has features like Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) that allow you to isolate your resources in a private network, much like having your own data center segment.

If data residency is a concern (perhaps you used OVH’s EU servers for GDPR compliance), you can choose an AWS EU region (like Frankfurt, Paris, etc.) to keep data within desired jurisdictions. AWS guarantees that data in a given region stays in that region unless you explicitly move it.

In summary, AWS can be extremely secure – many would argue more secure than a single-company’s on-prem setup or smaller provider, due to the sheer amount of resources AWS dedicates to security. The key is to follow best practices: enforce least privilege access, keep your systems patched (AWS makes this easier through services and automation), and use the security features available. After migration, consider doing an AWS Well-Architected Review focusing on the Security pillar, or engage a security consultant to validate your cloud setup. The good news is AWS’s security features are very robust, and with proper configuration, your data and workloads can be even more secure on AWS than they were on OVH.

Do we have the expertise to manage AWS, and what if we run into problems?

This concern revolves around the skills gap. AWS is a different environment than OVH, and there is a learning curve. To bridge this, invest in training your team on AWS fundamentals. Amazon provides a lot of free digital training, and there are certification paths for architects, developers, sysops, etc. Even a few weeks of focused training can bring your IT staff up to speed on AWS basics. Additionally, AWS’s extensive documentation and active community forums mean that for almost any issue, a solution or best practice is a quick search away.

During the migration from OVH to AWS, if you’re unsure about certain steps, you might partner with an AWS consulting firm or an AWS Advanced Partner (such as Cloudvisor or others) who specialize in cloud migrations. They can either handle the migration for you or co-pilot with your team, ensuring knowledge transfer. Many companies find that bringing in experts for the initial migration pays off by avoiding mistakes and delays. (You can read about Challenges of Migrating to AWS & How to Overcome Them for expert tips on common problems and solutions.)

Post-migration, if you don’t want the burden of managing everything, you could use AWS Managed Services or outsource some operations to a Managed Service Provider. AWS also has premium support tiers – with Enterprise Support, you get a Technical Account Manager and 24/7 support with 15-minute response times for critical issues. This is like having AWS engineers on call to help your team. Even at lower support tiers, AWS Support can guide you through issues or questions.

In essence, while there is a shift in skillset from managing OVH infrastructure to mastering AWS, the resources available are vast. Many IT professionals find AWS’s automation and capabilities actually make infrastructure management easier in the long run (you can automate deployments, use Infrastructure-as-Code, etc.). Ensuring your team is prepared, and knowing when to get expert help, will smooth out the transition. Don’t let the fear of the unknown stop you – thousands of companies have successfully navigated this, and with the right support, you will too.

By addressing these common concerns – downtime, data transfer, cost, security, and skills – you can mitigate the risks associated with an OVH to AWS migration. Proper planning (as discussed in Section 2) combined with these solutions will ensure you handle the challenges effectively. Now, let’s move on to a concrete step-by-step migration process, where we put planning into action.

Step-by-Step OVH to AWS Migration Process

With preparation in place and challenges anticipated, it’s time to execute the migration. Here we’ll outline a step-by-step process to migrate from OVH to AWS. Every migration will have its nuances, but the following framework can be applied to most scenarios. We’ll incorporate some of the AWS migration services and best practices to streamline the move.

Step 1: Set Up Your AWS Environment

Before moving anything, get your AWS foundations ready. If you haven’t already, create an AWS Account (or accounts, if using a multi-account strategy for dev/test/prod separation). Go to the AWS console and configure your base infrastructure: set up a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to closely match (or improve upon) your network setup from OVH. Create subnets (public for things like web servers if needed, private for databases), and configure route tables and an Internet Gateway for external access. Think about IP address planning – you might want to use similar IP ranges as your OVH network for continuity (just ensure they don’t overlap if you plan a VPN). Also set up Security Groups and Network ACLs in AWS which function like firewalls to control traffic to your instances. This is akin to setting firewall rules or security settings on OVH.

If you will use AWS Identity and Access Management, define IAM roles and users now for your team, and perhaps create roles for your EC2 instances as needed (for accessing S3, etc., without embedding credentials). It’s also wise to enable AWS CloudTrail and Amazon CloudWatch for logging and monitoring from day one, so you have visibility into the new environment. Essentially, this step is about laying down the AWS “landing zone” for your workloads. AWS offers a Landing Zone solution and Control Tower to automate multi-account setups if your organization is large – but for a straightforward migration, focus on VPC, networking, and basic IAM.

Step 2: Prepare Your OVH Servers for Migration

On the OVH side, ensure you have administrative access to all servers and that they’re in a healthy state. Apply any critical updates (you don’t want to migrate outdated OS with known issues if you can avoid it). Verify that you have recent backups – just as a contingency. If you plan to use the AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) for lift-and-shift, you will need to install the AWS MGN agent on each source server. This agent will handle the replication. Check AWS’s documentation for any prerequisites (e.g., certain OS versions supported, etc.). Similarly, if you plan to use AWS Database Migration Service for databases, you might need to set up a replication instance and grant it access to your DB. The idea is to get everything ready so that when you start migrating data, there are no last-minute permissions or network issues. It might help to open any necessary firewall ports on OVH servers (for example, if you use MGN or DataSync, they might require certain ports open to communicate with AWS endpoints). Also, if your OVH environment is in a private network, consider establishing a VPN connection or AWS Direct Connect to AWS for a secure, high-throughput link. A VPN over the internet can suffice for moderate data volumes and offers encryption. AWS Direct Connect is a dedicated line and is more for enterprise setups needing guaranteed bandwidth.

Step 3: Migrate Data and Applications

Now, begin migrating your data. There are two broad approaches: synchronize data first, then switch applications, or move applications and then migrate data. Often, you do a bit of both in tandem.

• Data Migration: If you have large databases, initiate a continuous replication. For example, for MySQL or MariaDB, set up the AWS RDS MySQL as a replica of your OVH MySQL (binlog replication), or use DMS to replicate changes. For file systems, start copying files to S3 or EBS volumes attached to new EC2 instances. If using an AWS Snowball, at this point you’d load the Snowball device and ship it back; the actual import to AWS will happen offline. If not, use tools like rsync with --append or other flags for big files, or AWS DataSync which automates and accelerates transfers (it handles incremental sync, verifies data, and can compress in transit). Plan to iterate this step – your first pass gets most data across, and subsequent passes get what changed.
• Application Migration: For each application or server, decide if you’re doing a fresh setup in AWS or migrating an image. You could create an AMI (Amazon Machine Image) from your OVH server if you export it (OVH supports exporting VMs in some formats). AWS VM Import/Export service can import certain VM images (like VMDK, VHD, etc.) into EC2. However, it might be simpler to set up a new EC2 and install your app afresh, then restore data onto it – this ensures a clean, optimized AWS instance. For example, launch a new Amazon EC2 instance with the desired OS (Amazon Linux 2, Ubuntu, Windows, etc.), then install your application (web server, application code, etc.). If you containerize, you might instead upload your container images to Amazon ECR and deploy using Amazon ECS or Kubernetes (EKS).

If you used the Rehosting with AWS Application Migration Service, it will handle creating new EC2 instances for each source server in AWS automatically, and keep them in sync. When you’re ready, you can “launch cutover instances” in AWS from the latest replicated data. Those instances should be near-identical to your OVH ones, just running in AWS. Even with this, it’s good to do a test launch first (MGN allows test launches) to ensure everything boots correctly in AWS.

Regardless of method, once you have the application running on AWS (in an isolated manner), test it thoroughly using internal test URLs or dummy data. Does the web app connect to its database? Are all configurations (like file paths, environment variables) updated for AWS? Often, minor tweaks are needed (for instance, if your app pointed to a static IP or had the server name, update it to the new one, or better, use DNS names). Keep your OVH environment live while testing the AWS environment with staging data or a copy of the database to avoid disrupting production.

Step 4: Cut Over to AWS

This is the moment of truth – switching your production usage from OVH to AWS. Schedule a cutover time when traffic is low. Communicate any expected downtime to users if necessary (hopefully minimal). The steps at cutover usually include:

• Take a final incremental backup or sync of any remaining data changes from OVH to AWS. For example, apply the latest database binlog to the AWS database replica and then point applications to the new DB. Or do a final rsync for file storage.
• Stop application services on OVH (to ensure no new writes happen there that would be missed).
• Start the application services on AWS (if they weren’t already running). For a brief period, you might have both running but you’d ensure the one on AWS has the latest data and is now the primary.
• Update DNS records to point users to AWS infrastructure. DNS cutover is common: if your domain was pointing to an OVH server’s IP, update it to the AWS Elastic IP or load balancer DNS name. Time-to-live (TTL) on DNS records should be lowered ahead of time (a day before, set TTL to, say, 5 minutes) so that when you switch, users get the update quickly.
• Alternatively, if you used the same IP space via VPN or you migrated behind the scenes, simply re-route traffic via your reverse proxy or load balancer to the new AWS instances.

Monitor the switchover closely. Use CloudWatch, check application logs, and perhaps run health check scripts to verify everything is functioning. It’s wise to have your team on deck during cutover to quickly address any issue. Common post-cutover issues include: missing environment variables, file permission differences, or perhaps performance tuning needed on the new database. Hopefully, you identified these in testing. If something goes wrong that severely impacts the service, you have your rollback plan: you can always revert DNS back to OVH as a short-term fallback (since that environment is intact). But assuming all goes well, users will be served by AWS and may not even notice except perhaps improved speed!

Step 5: Post-Migration Verification and Optimization

Congratulations, your workloads are now running on AWS! Now perform a thorough verification. Ensure all data came over correctly (compare record counts in databases, check file integrity via checksums if possible). Run your application’s test suites or simply have QA do regression testing. Also, measure the performance – is response time as expected or better? Sometimes you need to tweak instance sizes if the load is different in AWS.

This is also the time to set up your monitoring and autoscaling on AWS properly now that the system is live. Enable Amazon CloudWatch alarms for critical metrics (CPU, memory via CloudWatch Agent, etc.) and set up AWS Auto Scaling groups if you haven’t, so that your application servers can automatically add or remove instances based on demand. Double-check security group rules to ensure only intended traffic is allowed (tighten any overly permissive rules that might have been used during migration troubleshooting).

Importantly, decommission resources on OVH that are no longer needed – but only after you’re fully satisfied with AWS operation. You might want to wait a few days or a week as a safety net. Keep the OVH servers off or isolated (to avoid confusion) but don’t cancel them until you’re sure you have everything and AWS is stable. When ready, terminate those OVH services to stop incurring costs there.

Step 6: Optimize Your New AWS Environment (ongoing):

Now that you are in AWS, you can start leveraging more AWS-native features. For example, consider using Amazon CloudFront CDN to cache content globally (improving speed for users far from your server). Look into turning on AWS Shield Standard (enabled by default, protects against common DDoS attacks) and maybe AWS WAF for your web application. Check the AWS Trusted Advisor (a tool that gives recommendations) — it will highlight things like security group issues, underutilized instances, or opportunities to use reserved instances to save money. Over time, you might start refactoring parts of your application to serverless or managed services to reduce maintenance. But these are improvements on an already working setup.

In summary, the above steps provide a structured path from planning to execution:

1. Environment Prep (AWS & OVH) – Configure AWS network and access, ready the source servers (agents, VPN).
2. Data and App Migration – Copy data, set up AWS instances, iterate syncing and testing.
3. Cutover – Switch production to AWS (with minimal downtime using careful syncing and DNS tricks).
4. Post-Migration – Validate and optimize in AWS, then decommission OVH.

This process, while detailed, ensures you cover all bases. Each step is crucial to avoid disruptions and to make the most of AWS from day one. Migrating infrastructure can be complex, but by breaking it into these steps, it becomes much more manageable. If at any point you feel overwhelmed, remember you can get expert help or use AWS support – you’re not alone in this journey.

Now that you’ve migrated, the final step is ensuring you maximize the value from AWS. We’ll discuss cost management and further optimization next.

Post-Migration Optimization and Cost Management

Successfully migrating to AWS is a huge milestone – but the cloud journey doesn’t end at “lift-and-shift.” To truly get the most value out of AWS, you should continuously optimize your environment. Post-migration is the perfect time to fine-tune for performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency. This section will focus on cost management (since it’s often a big change coming from fixed-cost servers) and other optimizations, using the context of OVH vs AWS pricing and capabilities.

Cost Management in AWS: Now that you’re on AWS, you might notice the granular billing for every hour of an EC2 instance, every GB stored on S3, etc. To avoid any surprises, immediately set up some cost monitoring. AWS Budgets lets you define a monthly budget (say, equal to what you used to pay OVH, as a starting point) and will alert you via email or SNS if you approach or exceed that amount. This gives you a proactive warning. Also, enable Cost Explorer to visualize spending trends per service. You can identify which services are accruing the most cost – perhaps EC2 or maybe data transfer if users are downloading a lot.

Review your EC2 instances and see if their sizes make sense. AWS has a wide range of instance types; you might find that your OVH server was over-provisioned and you can run comfortably on a smaller EC2. Or vice versa – maybe the OVH environment was underpowered and now you’ve given more headroom. Either way, adjust instance types to optimize cost/performance. If you have multiple AWS accounts (for example, separate dev/test/prod), consider using AWS Cost Explorer’s consolidated view or AWS Organizations for a unified bill.

One quick win after a couple weeks on AWS is to check Trusted Advisor’s cost optimization section. It often suggests things like idle resources (maybe an EC2 you spun up for testing and forgot to terminate) or under-utilized instances. If some EC2 instances have very low average CPU, you could potentially combine workloads or downsize them.

Right-sizing and Auto Scaling: AWS allows dynamic scaling, which can drastically save cost compared to static servers. Set up Auto Scaling for your application servers – determine a safe minimum (perhaps 1 or 2 instances) and allow it to add instances when CPU or requests increase. This way, you pay for extra servers only when needed. At low load times, auto scaling will terminate unnecessary instances. Over time, this could yield big savings and also maintain better performance during spikes. OVH didn’t offer such elasticity on the fly, so this is a new advantage to exploit.

For databases, if you moved to Amazon RDS, enable storage auto-scaling (so you don’t over-provision disk upfront – RDS can grow storage as needed). Also look at Aurora Serverless if you have spiky database loads; it scales capacity up/down automatically to match demand, possibly saving cost.

Use Cost-Effective AWS Pricing Models: Once your AWS environment is stable and you expect to run it long-term, leverage Reserved Instances (RI) or Savings Plans. For example, if you have an EC2 that will be running 24/7 for the next year (like maybe your main application server or database), you could purchase a 1-year Reserved Instance for that instance type. This can instantly cut the hourly cost by ~30% or more (discount varies). AWS Savings Plans are even more flexible, giving discount on compute usage across instance types or even AWS Lambda usage, as long as you commit to a certain spend per hour. These require some commitment but pay off quickly if you were going to use the resources anyway. Since with OVH you were used to monthly contracts, doing a 1-year RI on AWS is not that different – but now cheaper. Many businesses migrating to AWS achieve cost savings by smart use of these pricing models, effectively beating OVH’s flat pricing by leveraging AWS efficiencies.

Another cost optimization angle is storage class optimization. If you migrated a lot of data to S3, consider using S3 lifecycle policies to move infrequently accessed data to cheaper tiers like S3 Infrequent Access or Glacier. For instance, backups or archives that you brought from OVH could go to Glacier Deep Archive at a fraction of the cost of S3 standard. AWS also has volume discounts, so as you use more (especially in S3 or CloudFront bandwidth), the unit price drops slightly.

For more in-depth strategies on reducing AWS costs, you might refer to our article Best Ways to Reduce AWS EC2 Costs: A 2025 Expert Guide – it covers a range of tactics from rightsizing to using spot instances.

Performance and Reliability Optimizations: After cost, look at performance tuning. Leverage AWS’s strengths: put a global CDN (CloudFront) in front of your website to cache content closer to users worldwide, reducing latency and offloading work from your servers. Use Load Balancers (ELB/ALB) in front of EC2 instances to distribute traffic evenly and to easily add/remove instances during scaling. If you moved a database, maybe consider Amazon ElastiCache (Redis or Memcached) to cache frequent queries in memory and speed up responses. For reliability, deploy critical instances in at least two Availability Zones; AWS will handle routing and failover if one AZ has an issue. For example, if you have an EC2-based web server in one AZ, run another in a second AZ and put them behind a load balancer – this way, even if an entire data center went down (rare, but as we saw with OVH, not impossible), your site stays up with the other instance.

Security Posture: Now that things are running, finalize your security hardening. Ensure you’re using IAM roles instead of long-term AWS keys wherever possible (no hard-coded credentials in code). Rotate any secrets or API keys that you brought over from OVH services. Maybe set up AWS Config to continuously check for compliance (e.g., no open S3 buckets, no wide-open security groups). The AWS ecosystem has many tools – use them to enforce good practices. AWS’s managed services can take a lot of security burden off you (patching, OS updates, etc.), so use RDS, AWS Managed AD, etc., if you aren’t already, to reduce maintenance.

Leverage AWS for Innovation: Finally, with your environment stabilized and optimized, consider what new AWS services might benefit your business. One reason to migrate is to unlock capabilities that weren’t available on OVH. Perhaps you can use AWS Athena to run analytics on logs stored in S3, or use Amazon QuickSight for BI dashboards. Maybe integrate AWS Lambda for some serverless processing tasks (like image resizing on the fly or CRON jobs). If your application could benefit from search, instead of managing ElasticSearch on OVH, you can use Amazon OpenSearch Service. The idea is to gradually modernize and take advantage of AWS as more than just a VM hosting platform. This will increase the value you get from the cloud.

As a concrete example, recall the case study we discussed: after migrating from OVH to AWS, the company planned to break their monolithic app into microservices using AWS ECS (Elastic Container Service). You too can chart out future improvements now that the heavy lift of migration is done. Migrating is not just about moving as-is, but setting the stage for future growth. AWS offers well-architected frameworks and free architecture reviews – taking advantage of these will ensure your new environment follows best practices going forward.

In summary, post-migration optimization involves constant tuning and exploring AWS offerings. Keep an eye on both performance metrics and cost reports. Encourage your team to stay updated on AWS announcements (there are always new services or price reductions that could benefit you). By doing so, you’ll continuously reap more benefits and savings beyond the initial move.

Remember, the goal of moving from OVH to AWS was likely to improve your technology stack’s agility, scalability, and capabilities. With the migration from OVH to AWS complete, you have accomplished that goal – now maximize it. Fine-tune your AWS setup to outperform your old OVH setup on all fronts. And if you ever need guidance or a fresh perspective, AWS experts and communities are there to help. Your cloud journey has just begun, and the possibilities on AWS are vast.

Conclusion

Migrating from OVH to AWS is a significant undertaking, but as we’ve explored in this guide, the benefits are well worth the effort. By moving to AWS, you gain access to an unparalleled suite of cloud services, greater scalability to handle growth, improved reliability with global infrastructure, and a robust security and compliance environment. In summary, AWS empowers your business to innovate faster and serve customers better than ever – all while providing tools to optimize costs when managed correctly.

Let’s recap the key points: We started with why an OVH to AWS migration makes sense – highlighting AWS’s pay-as-you-go efficiency, vast service offerings, and global reach versus OVH’s more limited scope. Then, we walked through careful planning – assessing current systems, setting goals, and choosing the right migration strategy (from simple lift-and-shift to more transformative approaches). We tackled common challenges, from minimizing downtime to transferring massive data sets, showing that with AWS solutions like Snowball and DataSync (and good planning), these challenges can be overcome. We outlined a detailed step-by-step migration process, giving you a roadmap to follow for a smooth transition. Finally, we discussed how to optimize your new AWS environment for performance and cost, ensuring you fully capitalize on what AWS offers.

By following these guidelines, your migration should result in a faster, more scalable infrastructure with minimal disruptions to your operations. Many companies that have completed this migration report immediate improvements – faster load times, ability to scale during peak demand, and more insight into their systems. For example, after migrating to AWS, one business saw their site handle thousands of concurrent users with sub-second response times and zero downtime. Another benefit is freeing your team from managing hardware or worrying about outages in a single data center (no more sleepless nights over data center fires or hardware failures – AWS has redundancy for that!).

If you’re considering taking the leap from OVH to AWS, there’s no better time than now. Cloud technology is continually advancing, and being on AWS means you can leverage the latest and greatest with just a few clicks. We encourage you to start drafting your migration plan using the steps in this guide. Not sure where to begin or need expert assistance? Cloudvisor is here to help.

As an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, we’ve guided many companies through successful cloud migrations. Feel free to contact our team for a free consultation or to discuss how we can make your OVH to AWS migration a success.

Empower your business with the scalability and innovation that AWS provides. Migrating from OVH to AWS can be a game-changer for your infrastructure and your business growth. With the knowledge from this guide and the right support, you’re well-equipped to execute a smooth migration and start reaping the benefits of AWS. It’s time to future-proof your infrastructure – make the move to AWS and unlock new possibilities for your organization.