If you're participating in AWS's Migration Assistance Program, you probably know that getting AWS credits for resources that you've migrated into AWS requires that you apply the right tags to those resources – and you want to apply those tags as early as possible in order to earn the credits as early as possible. nOps MAP features help automate this process, ensuring that you get the right tags applied to your resources as early as possible and get the maximum credit from the MAP program.

These MAP features can aid you if you're a new AWS customer, just starting out with AWS and migrating your workloads into the AWS cloud, or an existing AWS customer moving workloads from on-prem data centers or from other cloud providers.

And note that qualifying for the credit also requires an AWS Well Architected Framework Review, so that you get the most from your cloud deployment – and that review is also facilitated by nOps tools.

In order to get your AWS MAP credits, all your resources must be tagged according to the MAP rules. If your resources are not tagged properly, you won’t get the credits – and credits will only accrue on spends that occur after the tags are applied. nOps helps you to list the resources migrating for your various workloads, identify those that have yet to be tagged, apply the right tags, and then track your AWS incentive credits over the course of your migration. And in so doing, you'll be setting up all your workloads for the required Well Architected Review, which nOps can also help you conduct.

To use the nOps MAP facitliy, from the nOps dashboard go to Workload > AWS MAP:

The nOps MAP facility starts with the page AWS MAP 2.0 Summary, where you’ll find three sections:

To create/add a MAP migration project in nOps, click + Create MAP Project at the upper right; it will bring up this dialog:

In the dialog, fill out the details:

Once you’ve entered all the details for this MAP project, click Create. The project you just created will show up in the List of Migration Projects on the AWS MAP 2.0 Summary page:

Every MAP project that you create this way in nOps will correspond to a MAP Migration Contract.

Note: Creating a migration project will not tag the resources of that project. To tag resources, continue to the next section, “Tagging Resources”.

nOps provides an easy automated way for you to tag any untagged resources.

Once your MAP migration projects are defined, each with its associated resources via the server ID, nOps will show you all the AWS resources associated with the servers you have identified for the migration projects. As more and more resources from the servers/storage units are added, you will periodically come back to nOps to tag all untagged resources.

To tag resources of a project:

Note:

Once you click Yes, nOps will redirect you to AWS, where you will tag the selected resources. nOps will pre-fill Tag Key, Tag Value, and ARN, which is some of the information required to tag the selected resource.

To successfully tag a resource in AWS, you (the customer) will need two permissions from your AWS Admin – permission for the selected resources and the permission to tag resources.

Once you’ve defined one or more migration projects in nOps, you will see each of those projects listed at the bottom of the AWS MAP 2.0 Summary page where you started:

You can access and manage any migration project by clicking the ➡️ button in the Action column of the List of Migration Projects section.

In the AWS MAP 2.0 Summary page you will also find a collective summary of all of your migration projects in the form of:

Note: Once a quarter ends and the next one starts, you can still tag the untagged resources from the previous quarter but the previous quarter’s cost will not change.

In the AWS MAP 2.0 Summary page, again note the arrow at the right of each migration project line, in the Action column. Clicking that arrow brings up the details of that migration project:

The details page shows the performance of a specific migration project, and it is divided into four distinct sections. At the top of the details page you will see the Migration ID, Start Date, End Date, Tag Key, Server ID, and Workload associated with the migration project you just clicked:

The next three sections are all about navigating your incentive credits, tracking your tagging status, and tagging untagged resources:

MAP Tracker offers a way for you to find the scope of your project and navigate your incentive credits over the entire period of your migration, with the help of:

This section is similar to the Current Tagging Status of the AWS MAP 2.0 Summary page, which summarizes the tagging status of all your migration projects.

The Current Tagging Status on this details page shows the tagging status for only this specific migration project. It shows a bar chart for how much of your spending has been credited against tagged resources, and how much remains against untagged resources, in the current QTD, for this specific migration project.

This section shows all the resources, tagged or untagged, within the migration project. You can filter the resources based on the account associated with the resource and the tagging status (tagged, untagged) of the resource. You also have the option to search any specific service with the help of the search box at the top right of the list.

To tag untagged resources, select the untagged resources and click the + Add Migration Tag button. To learn more about the process in detail, see the Tagging Resources Within Each Project to Earn MAP Credits section of this article.

The resource table gives:

The resource table will update periodically as more resources are added. Continue visiting the List of Resources section to tag all newly added untagged resources for the duration of the migration project.

Note:

Once you tag an untagged resource, it will take approximately one hour for the change to reflect in nOps.

You can select multiple resources and tag, then click on the + Add Migration Tag button to tag them in one go. For resources that belong to different accounts, nOps will present them grouped by account, and you can tag resources for one account at a time.

What to do if numbers don’t match what see in AWS:

- Check dates of tagging vs Amazon

- Put in past dates for tagging when not tagged till later in AWS

- Vs Tag Explorer, which assumes the resource had the tag for the history of its life

What to do if you don’t have the permissions to tag your migration project resources: