AEM as Cloud Service Migration Tools

AEM as Cloud Service providing useful tools for migrating from AEM On-Premises. This article covers various tools available & their purpose. The tools can be downloaded from adobe “Software Distribution” portal.

Tools

Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) Tool

The Best Practices Analyzer is a tool which generates a report to help in migration from any AEM 6.* version projects to AEM as Cloud Service.

  1. BPA report is built using the output of “AEM Pattern Detector”. The version of Pattern Detector used by BPA is included in the BPA installation package.
  2. BPA may only be run by the admin user or a user in the Administrators group.
  3. BPA is support on AEM Instances with version 6.1 and above.
  4. BPA can run on any environment, but it is preferred to have it run on a Stage environment.
  5. The generation of BPA report contents can take a significant amount of time. It can be downloaded in three file formats
  • JSON
  • CSV
  • TSV
  1. The report format with details is as below.
  • Report Overview – Information about the report.
  • System Overview – Information about the AEM System on which BPA was run.
  • Finding Categories – Finding with each section having category name, sub-types, finding count & important, summary, link to category documentation etc.

Importance Levels are as below,

  • INFO – Informational purpose. No action needed.
  • ADVISORY – Potential Upgrade Issue. Recommended Investigation.
  • MAJOR – Likely Upgrade Issue which should be addressed.
  • CRITICAL – Very likely upgrade issue which must be addressed.

Note:

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/experience-manager-cloud-service/moving/cloud-migration/best-practices-analyzer/using-best-practices-analyzer.html?lang=en

Content Transfer Tool

The Content Transfer Tool is a tool developed by Adobe that can be used to move existing content over from a source AEM instance to the target AEM as Cloud Service instance.

There are two phases associated with content transfer:

  1. Extraction: Extraction refers to extracting content from the source AEM instance into a temporary area called migration set. A migration set is a cloud storage area provided by Adobe to a temporary store that transferred content between the source AEM instance to the Cloud Service AEM instance.
  2. Ingestion: Ingestion refers to ingesting content from the migration set into the target Cloud Service instance.

A migration set has the following attributes:

  • A maximum of four migration sets can be created and maintained at a time during the content transfer activity.
  • Each migration set should have a unique name.
  • If a migration set has been inactive for more than 30 days, It will automatically deleted.
  • Whenever a migration set is created, it is associated with a specific environment. We can only ingest into an author or a publish instance of the same environment.

Note: 

https://docs.adobe.com/content/help/en/experience-manager-cloud-service/moving/cloud-migration/content-transfer-tool/overview-content-transfer-tool.html

https://docs.adobe.com/content/help/en/experience-manager-cloud-service/moving/cloud-migration/content-transfer-tool/using-content-transfer-tool.html

Asset Workflow Migration Tool

  • Asset Workflow Migration Tool is used to automatically migrate asset processing workflows from on-premises or AMS deployments of AEM processing profiles and OSGi configurations for use in AEM Assets as a Cloud Service.

 For “Installing Asset Workflow Migration Tool” refer to below mentioned link.

https://github.com/adobe/aem-cloud-migrationanalyzer.html

AEM Dispatcher Tool

  • AEM Dispatcher Converter converts existing AMS Dispatcher configurations to AEM as CS configurations.
  • For more information on how to use this tool, visit the below link.

 https://docs.adobe.com/content/help/en/experience-manager-cloud-service/moving/refactoring-tools/dispatcher-transformation-utility-tools.html

AEM Modernization Tool

AEM Modernization suite of tool provides AEM Development teams with tools to convert legacy current AEM features to the current supported capabilities. It allows the easy conversion of

  • Static templates to Editable templates.
  • Design configurations to policies.
  • Foundation Components to Core Components.
  • Classic UI to Touch UI [Recommendation Coral UI 3].

AEM Repository Modernizer

Repository Modernizer is a utility developed to restructure existing project packages by separating content & code [Mutable/Immutable] into discrete packages to be compatible with AEM as Cloud Service project structure definition. It uses AEM Project Archetype for project structure.

  • ui.apps package deploys to /apps and contains all the code.
  • ui.content package deploys to runtime-writable areas (/content, /etc, /home etc.)
  • all package is a container package that contains the sub-packages ui.apps & ui.content
  • As per adobe recommendation use Adobe I/O CLI aio-cli-plugin-aem-cloud-service-migration of project code structure from source to destination.

NOTE: – This tool migrate core folder as is without any code or structure changes. It is developer responsibility to compile code with latest available SDK Jar.

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/experience-manager-cloud-service/moving/refactoring-tools/repo-modernizer.html?lang=en

 

Discovery:

Planning

  • Understand AEM as Cloud Service architecture, notable changes & features (available/deprecated).
  • Run ‘Best Practices Analyzer (BPA)’ on source On-Premises environment which generates a report which can then be used for analysis & evaluation to prepare estimations.
  • Review the estimations & resource planning.
  • Establish Project KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), success criteria & project timelines.

Execution

  • Before Execution phase of a project, it is important to familiarize with Cloud Manager & Setting Up Local Environment.
  • Cloud Manager enables to self-manage AEM in Cloud. It includes management of Programs, Environments, CI/CD & Git etc.
  • ‘Content Transfer Tool’ or ‘Package Manager’ are used to migrate content over from a source On-Premises AEM Instance to the target AEM Cloud Service Instance.
  • Create a new branch for Refactor/Code Optimize

o   Setup Local Development & Dispatcher

o   Compile Code using SDK API Jar

o   Run ‘Best Practices Analyzer (BPA)’

  • Project Structuring using Cloud Archetype
  • Custom Index Definitions
  • Custom Run Modes

o   Review & Execute necessary changes.

o   Deploy to Local SDK & Perform smoke testing via AEM SDK.

o   Leveraging ‘AEM Dispatcher Tool’ for migration & Review Dispatcher Configurations.

o   Test Dispatcher Configurations using Dispatcher SDK.

Deployment

  1. Deploy to Cloud Manager git.
  2. Run CI/CD pipeline using “Code Quality Pipeline” which will perform build compilation, code quality checks & builds runnable image.
  3. Run CI/CD pipeline using “Deployment Pipeline” to deploy to Development Environment.
  4. Migrate Content using “Content Transfer Tool”.
  5. Perform all types of testing recommended.

References