Modernize .NET workloads on AWS

Introduction

Modernize your .NET workloads on AWS to reduce costs, take advantage of containers and serverless, and move to microservices and cloud-native architectures. Assistive modernization tools from AWS do the heavy lifting and reduce manual effort.

Modernization involves replatforming or refactoring legacy enterprise applications by combining modern infrastructure, architecture, and organizational patterns. Through modernization, you can realize benefits that include lower costs, increased scalability, faster feature delivery, improved development, and operational agility.

Choosing the right modernization strategy for .NET legacy applications can be a complex decision. Use the decision matrix to determine the migration and modernization options for legacy .NET applications, based on your use case and resources.

For common approaches that you can use to modernize your Windows-based and .NET applications, see the following:

• Guide to Microsoft Workloads modernization
• Choosing an approach for modernizing .NET applications
• Modernizing and replatforming .NET applications

If you are an architect or a developer exploring options to modernize your Microsoft workloads, see AWS modernization tools for Microsoft Workloads.

For a hands-on workshop on modernizing a .NET 6 local web application and migrating it to AWS, see Modernization workshop.

For an end-to-end ASP.NET application modernization journey, see the hands-on workshop on Modernize .NET applications: Take a .NET Framework application to .NET.

For best practices for modernizing .NET Framework applications on AWS according to the security perspective of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF), see Security best practices for modernizing .NET applications.

Containerize and migrate .NET web applications

Migrate your .NET framework applications to Windows Containers, and then host them on AWS container services.

Use AWS App2Container, a command line tool, to containerize your application. This tool automatically generates a container image configured with the correct dependencies, network configurations, and deployment instructions for Amazon ECS or Amazon EKS.

For a tutorial on containerizing your .NET Core applications to Linux containers and migrating to AWS, see Accelerate containerization and migration of ASP.NET Core applications to AWS using AWS App2Container.

Download AWS App2Container.

To modernize your existing .NET Framework applications by refactoring to the latest, cross-platform version of .NET (previously referred to as .NET Core) and replatforming from Windows virtual machines to Linux containers, see Modernize .NET applications with Linux containers.

For a step-by-step process to modernize your Java and .NET applications with using AWS migration & modernization tools, see Modernize with AWS App2Container Workshop.

Port your .NET framework applications to modern .NET

Port your .NET Framework applications to modern .NET and save on licensing costs by running on Linux.

To refactor your legacy .NET applications to AWS, use the AWS Toolkit for .NET Refactoring. It provides a compatibility assessment report and helps port your code.

To get started with your porting efforts, use the Porting Assistant for .NET tool. This is an open source tool that quickly scans .NET Framework applications to identify incompatibilities with .NET Core, finds known replacements, and then generates a detailed compatibility assessment.

For more information, see Accelerate .NET application modernization with Porting Assistant for .NET Visual Studio IDE extension.

Refactor monolith apps to microservices

Refactor your old monolith apps to microservices-based architecture composed of small independent services.

Use AWS Microservice Extractor for .NET as an advisor to assess and visualize monolithic code and recommend microservice candidates, using AI and heuristics. Microservice Extractor also serves as a robotic builder to simplify microservices extraction.

To learn about considerations for refactoring a monolithic ASP.NET application into a microservice-based architecture, review this technical guide on Monolithic to Microservice Journey for .NET Applications.

To learn how to use AWS Microservice Extractor for .NET to modernize your legacy ASP.NET Web Forms application, see Extracting microservices from a monolithic ASP.NET Web Forms application.

For a step-by-step process to extract an independent service from an ASP.NET MVC5 based monolithic application that uses Entity Framework 6.0, see Microservice Extractor For .NET.

For a hands-on workshop on how to use the AWS SDK and Terraform to create and develop cloud native microservices on AWS, see Developing ASP.NET Core microservice on AWS.