ECS to GKE Migration POC

AWS to GCP GKE Migration

Current State vs Target State

Component	AWS Current	GCP Target
Container Orchestration	ECS	GKE
Container Registry	ECR	GCR/Artifact Registry
Database	RDS	Cloud SQL
Cache	ElastiCache	Memorystore
Storage	S3	Cloud Storage
CDN	CloudFront	Cloud CDN
Compute	EC2	GCE

Migration Pros

Financial Benefits

• Immediate: $175k credits available ($75k now + $100k mid-2026)
• Cost Savings 
• Predictable Costs: Credits provide budget certainty through 2026

Operational Advantages

• Team already experienced with GKE (dev/QA environments)
• Existing IaC scripts enable 2-hour end-to-end deployment
• All environments on same platform / Can be isolated easily
• Single cloud provider to manage

Technical Benefits

• Native Kubernetes: GKE offers superior K8s experience vs ECS
• Better Autoscaling: More granular scaling options - Already completed POC on how can we manage resource and the limits for individual workloads as needed, this can directly be managed from jenkins itself.
• Integrated Monitoring: Already setup Signoz with GCP workloads and can be done similarly for prod.

Migration Cons

• AWS CloudWatch is super clean to monitor when compared to gcp monitoring but is manageable.
• GCP Resource Quotas sometimes becomes blockers for urgent resource deployments
• We would be transitioning from ECS to GKE, where when compared from peer to peer pricing of resources, for GKE we need to pay 75$/mo for kubernetes master node maintenance charges which are fixed. 
• Load Balancer Differences: ALB vs GCP Load Balancer configuration changes (Managable) - Will Cost higher as the setups for k8 would require multiple load balancers. [We can make changes to architecture, still networking with GKE would cost us higher with shared LB with ingress]

Security & Compliance Considerations

SOC 2 Requirements

Maintained Capabilities:

• VPC network isolation equivalent to AWS VPC
• IAM roles and policies (Cloud IAM)
• Encryption at rest and in transit
• Audit logging (Cloud Audit Logs)
• Access controls and monitoring

Security Enhancements

• Workload Identity: Secure pod-to-GCP service authentication (TBD but can be implemented, while ECS do have service mesh) 
• VPC Service Controls: Additional network security layer
• Cloud Security Command Center: Centralized security insights

Compliance Considerations

• GCP maintains SOC 2 Type II certification
• Cloud SQL automatic encryption and backup
• Network security groups equivalent functionality
• Audit trail continuity must be planned

Performance Impact

Expected Improvements

• GKE rolling updates vs ECS deployment time (More control than ECS)
• Similar global infrastructure

Potential Concerns

• Initial Migration Performance: Temporary impact during transition
• Network Latency: Minimal difference in most regions
• Database Performance: Cloud SQL vs RDS comparable

Migration Effort Estimate

Low Effort (Existing Assets)

• GKE cluster deployment ✅
• Application containerization ✅
• Database migration scripts ✅
• IaC automation ✅
• Quotas and Limits Management

Risk Mitigation

Migration Strategy

1. Blue-Green Deployment: Parallel environments during transition
2. Database Replication: Real-time sync before cutover
3. Rollback Plan: Maintain AWS environment for 3-4 days post-migration