Overview

This guide covers migrating workloads from Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2 instances to OCI Native Compute Instances.

AWS → OCI migration is typically driven by:

• Cost optimization initiatives
• Performance requirements
• Multi-cloud consolidation
• Vendor diversification strategy
• Regulatory or data residency alignment

This is not a simple relocation — it is a cloud platform realignment.

Introduction

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provides enterprise-grade infrastructure services designed for high performance, predictable pricing, and strong isolation.

OCI Native Compute Instances offer:

• Flexible OCPU/RAM configuration
• High-performance networking
• Flexible Block Volume performance (VPU model)
• Off-box virtualization security architecture

Migrating from AWS requires redesign of:

• Networking
• Identity and access control
• Storage mapping
• Autoscaling constructs
• Monitoring stack

Target Platform: OCI Native Compute Instances

Key Characteristics:

• Hypervisor: OCI Compute Service
• Management: OCI Console / CLI / API
• Networking: Virtual Cloud Network (VCN)
• Storage: OCI Block Volumes
• Shapes: Flexible OCPU/RAM, DenseIO, GPU, HPC, Ampere
• Best Use Case: Replatformed cloud workloads

Migration Tooling

Oracle Cloud Migrations (OCM) – Recommended

Oracle Cloud Migrations provides automated migration capabilities for AWS EC2 workloads.

Core Capabilities

• Agentless EC2 discovery
• Asset inventory import
• Migration project orchestration
• Compute shape recommendations
• Incremental replication
• Cost visibility

Supported:

• AWS EC2 (EBS-backed x86 instances)
• Linux and Windows

OCM is ideal when:

• Migrating EC2 workloads directly into OCI Native
• Standard VM workloads without deep PaaS coupling
• OCI integration is strategic goal

RackWare (Alternative / Advanced Use Cases)

RackWare is often preferred when:

• DR architecture is built alongside migration
• Multi-cloud consolidation required
• Policy-driven orchestration is needed
• Heterogeneous workloads must be migrated

RackWare supports AWS, Azure, GCP, VMware, Hyper-V, KVM and physical.

Migration Considerations

Cloud-to-cloud migration requires redesign rather than replication.

Networking Redesign

AWS → OCI mapping:

• VPC → VCN
• Subnets → Subnets
• Security Groups → OCI NSGs / Security Lists
• Internet Gateway → Internet Gateway
• NAT Gateway → NAT Gateway

Key differences:

• AWS security model ≠ OCI security model
• Route table behavior differs
• Public IP model differs
• Elastic IPs cannot be migrated

IP remapping is required.

Elastic Load Balancers must be recreated using OCI Load Balancers.

Auto Scaling Groups must be recreated using:

• Instance Pools
• OCI Auto Scaling policies

Storage Mapping

AWS EBS → OCI Block Volumes

Map volume types carefully:

• gp3 → Balanced
• io1/io2 → High Performance
• st1/sc1 → Standard

Important considerations:

• Instance Store volumes are not migrated
• Ephemeral data must be externalized before migration
• Evaluate performance characteristics (IOPS, throughput)

OCI’s VPU model allows flexible performance tuning post-migration.

Identity & Access

IAM differences are significant.

AWS IAM roles must be redesigned using:

• OCI IAM policies
• Dynamic Groups
• Compartments

AWS-specific constructs such as:

• Instance Profiles
• Service Roles
• STS tokens

Require OCI equivalents.

Identity redesign is frequently underestimated.

OS & Agent Considerations

• Remove AWS SSM agent
• Replace CloudWatch with OCI Monitoring
• Adapt cloud-init scripts
• Replace metadata service integrations
• Validate Windows drivers

Automation pipelines may require refactoring.

AWS-Specific Architectural Risks

Workloads tightly coupled to AWS-native services may require redesign:

• RDS
• Lambda
• S3 event integrations
• CloudFront
• CloudFormation stacks

These cannot be “migrated” — they must be rebuilt.

Cost Optimization Opportunities

• AWS Reserved Instances cannot be transferred
• OCI pricing model differs (Universal Credits)
• OCI Preemptible Instances replace Spot
• Flexible shapes allow right-sizing

Cloud-to-cloud migration often unlocks overprovisioned resources.

Enterprise & Mission Critical Databases

For high-transaction databases:

Consider hybrid replication approach:

• Oracle DB → Data Guard / GoldenGate
• PostgreSQL/MySQL → Native replication
• Active Directory → Additional domain controllers

VM-level replication alone may not satisfy RPO/RTO requirements.

Decision Guidance

Choose AWS → OCI Native when:

• OCI integration is strategic objective
• Cost differential is measurable
• Multi-cloud consolidation is planned
• Performance improvement required

Avoid this path when:

• Heavy AWS PaaS dependence exists
• Workloads require extensive re-architecture without ROI

Best Practices

• Perform full dependency mapping
• Redesign networking before migration
• Pilot representative workloads
• Benchmark performance pre/post migration
• Validate IAM thoroughly
• Document security group translation

Strategic Insight

AWS → OCI migration is rarely about infrastructure alone.

It is usually driven by:

• Financial optimization
• Risk diversification
• Governance alignment
• Long-term platform strategy

The most successful migrations treat the initiative as:

Cloud architecture redesign — not workload relocation.