Announcing Amazon Q Developer transformation capabilities for .NET, mainframe, and VMware workloads (preview)

Today, we’re announcing the public preview of new Amazon Q Developer transformation capabilities for .NET, mainframe, and VMware workloads

Amazon Q Developer accelerates large-scale transformation of enterprise workloads with domain-expert generative AI agents supervised by modernization teams in a unified collaborative web experience.

Using the transformation capabilities of Amazon Q Developer, modernization teams can deliver large and complex projects, accelerating .NET porting, mainframe modernization, and VMware migration, while enhancing application security, resilience, performance, and scalability.

In this post, I give you a quick tour of the Amazon Q Developer transformation web experience.

Getting started with Amazon Q Developer transformation web experience
My organization’s Amazon Q Developer administrator previously provided me access to the web experience. The prerequisites are that I need to be part of the Amazon Q Developer Pro Tier subscription and a member of my organization’s AWS IAM Identity Center.

I sign in to the web experience using my credentials and create a new workspace. I’m presented with a page to create a transformation job with Amazon Q Developer.

I choose Ask Q to create a job, and it presents me with three options to choose from for creating a transformation job: Mainframe modernization, .NET modernization, and VMware migration.

Amazon Q Developer works collaboratively with me throughout the transformation journey spanning assessment, planning, and migration and modernization. I can add other team members to work alongside me, and Amazon Q Developer seamlessly integrates as a dependable part of my team. Amazon Q Developer helps me through every step of the transformation, including asset discovery, codebase analysis, wave planning, code refactoring, addressing incompatibilities, and implementing network automation.

Let’s have a closer look at the transformation process of each of the three workloads.

Porting of .NET applications from Windows to Linux
To start, I ask Amazon Q Developer to create a job for .NET modernization.

Amazon Q Developer provides a default name for the .NET modernization job and asks me if I would like to change anything before it creates the job. I continue with the default name and choose Create Job.

After the request is initiated, I can see the transformation steps and their progress in the left-side pane labeled Job Plan. On the right-side pane, I can see the details in the Dashboard section, any activities pending for me to act on in the Collaboration section, and the sequence of actions that have occurred in the Worklog section.

To begin the assessment, I connect Amazon Q Developer to my source code repositories using the steps outlined in the documentation. I was able to ask Amazon Q Developer about these steps, to receive in-product guidance as I progressed.

After connecting the source code repositories, Amazon Q Developer discovers the supported .NET applications. It then prepares for the transformation process by requesting from me specific inputs, such as selecting the target .NET version and choosing which repositories need to be transformed.

I provide the required inputs, save the information and choose Send to Q.

Amazon Q Developer automatically ports .NET applications I selected to the target version and commits the transformed code to a new branch in my repository when the task is complete, preserving the original source code. I can monitor the transformation’s progress on the Dashboard.

Modernization of mainframe applications
Now, let’s explore how Amazon Q Developer assists in the modernization of mainframe applications.

I ask Amazon Q Developer to create a new job for mainframe modernization. I see four phases in the Job Plan: Kick off modernization, Analyze code, Decompose code, and Plan migration wave.

I kick off the modernization by connecting my Amazon Web Services (AWS) account and specifying the resource location of mainframe applications by following the steps in the documentation.

Amazon Q Developer then analyzes the codebase, maps dependencies, and creates detailed documentation.

Next, Amazon Q Developer works with me to decompose my large monolith into simple and more loosely coupled business domains. I provide input on the files I need to group into different domains, and Amazon Q Developer decomposes them accordingly.

Then, using built-in mainframe and cloud domain expertise, Amazon Q Developer proposes a wave plan that I can review, update, and approve.

After approval, Amazon Q Developer implements automated refactoring of COBOL to Java, providing alerts when it needs input and status updates for tracking.

As you can see, Amazon Q Developer reduces timelines for large-scale assessment and modernization of mainframe applications through automated code analysis, documentation, decomposition, iterative planning, and refactoring.

Migration of VMware workloads
Let’s now examine how Amazon Q Developer helps me in migrating VMware applications.

I ask Amazon Q Developer to create a new job, and it creates an initial job plan for me to migrate my VMware virtual machines to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).

A typical VMware migration job consists of data discovery, application grouping, network migration and server migration steps. As the job progresses, Amazon Q Developer dynamically updates job plans and adds new steps, based on continual learning.

To discover on-premises data, I have an option to upload exports from tools such as RVtools, or I can use the AWS Application Discovery Service agentless or agent-based collectors to collect on-premises, server, and network traffic data.

Amazon Q Developer analyzes the discovered data, classifies it, and provides me a summary that includes data completeness indicators such as whether it has received enough network connection data to optimally group application servers and generate wave plans.

Amazon Q Developer then works collaboratively with me to build migration waves. It automatically suggests the waves and provides me with an option to edit by downloading the recommendations and uploading the new file.

Next, I select a target AWS account and ask Amazon Q Developer to use the uploaded network configuration to generate my AWS network. Amazon Q Developer translates the on-premises VMware network to generate the corresponding AWS network constructs.

Amazon Q Developer continues to work in collaboration with me to deploy the generated network and verifies its reach ability and performs reachability testing.

When the network migration is complete, Amazon Q Developer lets me select the waves I want to migrate. It prompts me to set Amazon EC2 instance preferences and generates a migration plan combining its previously generated artifacts. I can review and edit this plan according to my needs before uploading it to Amazon Q Developer to initiate migration with AWS Application Migration Service.

During the migration, I can track the overall transformation progress, including the state of network deployment and individual servers and waves, using the dashboard.

Join the preview
The transformation capabilities of Amazon Q Developer are available today in preview with an Amazon Q Developer Pro Tier subscription. To get started, visit the Amazon Q Developer User Guide.

– Prasad