Moving on-premises systems to AWS
Lift databases and apps into AWS.
My stack for this
- 01Claude Code
First step. It reverse-engineers the existing system: reads the source code, drives the CLIs, maps what's there, then writes the gap analysis and the migration plan, lift-and-shift or modernisation.
- 02AWS Database Migration Service
Database migration with replication until cut-over.
- 03AWS Organizations + IAM Identity Center
The landing spot.
- 04Pulumi
The target infrastructure, as code.
The picks, in brief
What each one is, my verdict, and what it costs. Every name opens the full entry: when to use it and when not, the gotchas with their fixes, provisioning and alternatives.
My main tool. I haven't hand-written code in two years.
Pricing: Included in Claude Pro ($20 a month, $17 billed annually), Max ($100 or $200 a month for 5x or 20x Pro's usage) and Team seats ($25 standard or $125 premium a month, $20 or $100 billed annually). Usage resets in five-hour windows, with weekly limits on top. Or pay API rates with a Console key or through Bedrock.
The only migration tool I use. It works.
Pricing: Sydney: replication instances from $0.112 an hour (dms.t3.medium) or $0.25 (r6i.large), double for Multi-AZ, plus $0.138/GB-month of storage. DMS Serverless: $0.1155 per DCU-hour (1 DCU = 2 GB of memory), capped by the maximum you set. DMS Schema Conversion is free. Data into DMS, and between DMS and a database in the same Availability Zone, is free.
Centralised accounts, billing and access. Every client gets this first.
Pricing: No extra charge. Control Tower is free too, but you pay for the AWS Config and CloudTrail it turns on. Replicating Identity Center to a second Region adds only the KMS key.
Infrastructure as real code. And it can use any Terraform provider, so nearly everything is provisionable from one codebase.
Pricing: Free and open source with a self-managed S3 backend (no Pulumi Cloud fees).
Where they sit
The layers of the stack this job touches, with every tool named on this page.
Data
Databases, migrations and the data lake.
Infrastructure as code
If I can't provision it, it loses points.
Accounts, identity and cost
The AWS foundation.
Build and test
How the code gets written and checked.
Want this stack in your AWS account?
Cloudless Labs is a Sydney consultancy. We migrate on-premises systems to AWS, build serverless apps on this stack, and coach teams to ship with Claude Code and Codex.