3 Migrating to AWS: CAF and the 7 Rs · AWS Cloud Practitioner

In this chapter you will learn how organizations plan and carry out a move to the cloud. You will meet the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF), its six perspectives and four transformation phases, and the business outcomes it is meant to deliver. You will learn the seven migration strategies (the 7 Rs) and how to pick between them, the AWS services that discover, move, and track workloads and data, the three phases of a large migration, and the AWS Migration Acceleration Program. This chapter maps to Domain 1, Cloud Concepts, Task Statement 1.3: “Understand the benefits of and strategies for migration to the AWS Cloud.”

3.1 Why migration needs a plan

Moving a single website to the cloud is a weekend project. Moving a company is not. A mid-sized enterprise might run several hundred applications, a few thousand servers, dozens of databases, and a tangle of integrations that nobody fully documented. Each application has an owner, a budget, a compliance story, and users who will complain loudly if it breaks.

That is why AWS talks about migration in two layers:

The organizational layer. Who needs to be involved, which skills must be built, how decisions get made, and how the business will measure success. The AWS Cloud Adoption Framework addresses this layer.

The technical layer. What to do with each application, which tools move servers and data, and in what order. The 7 Rs and the AWS migration services address this layer.

The exam tests both. Expect questions that describe a company’s situation and ask which CAF perspective, which migration strategy, or which service fits best.

3.2 The AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF)

The AWS Cloud Adoption Framework is a collection of guidance, built from AWS experience with thousands of customers, that helps an organization plan and accelerate its cloud transformation. It is not a piece of software and it costs nothing. Think of it as a checklist of everything an organization needs to get right, grouped so that the right people own each part.

AWS CAF organizes guidance into six perspectives. Each perspective is a lens owned by a group of stakeholders and contains a set of foundational capabilities. A capability is an organizational ability to use processes, people, and technology to achieve an outcome, such as “cloud financial management” or “identity and access management”. The current version of the framework describes more than 40 such capabilities across the six perspectives. AWS Cloud Adoption Framework: six perspectives

BUSINESS CAPABILITIES TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES

Aws caf

Figure 3.1: The six AWS CAF perspectives. Business, People, and Governance focus on business capabilities; Platform, Security, and Operations focus on technical capabilities.

The three business perspectives

Business perspective. Makes sure cloud investments accelerate digital transformation and business outcomes. Typical stakeholders: CEO, CFO, COO, CIO, and CTO. Example capabilities: strategy management, portfolio management, innovation management, product management, data monetization, and business insights. If a question mentions aligning IT spending with business strategy or building a business case, think Business.

People perspective. Serves as the bridge between technology and the business. It focuses on culture, organizational structure, leadership, and skills. Typical stakeholders: CHRO, CIO, COO, CTO, and cloud directors. Example capabilities: culture evolution, transformational leadership, cloud fluency, workforce transformation, change acceleration, and organization design. Questions about training staff, closing skill gaps, or managing resistance to change point to People.

Governance perspective. Orchestrates cloud initiatives while maximizing benefits and minimizing transformation risk. Typical stakeholders: CIO, CTO, CFO, chief data officer, and chief risk officer. Example capabilities: program and project management, benefits management, risk management, cloud financial management, application portfolio management, and data governance. Budget control, tracking whether benefits were realized, and managing risk across a portfolio point to Governance.

The three technical perspectives

Platform perspective. Builds an enterprise-grade, scalable, hybrid cloud platform and modernizes workloads. Typical stakeholders: CTO, technology leaders, architects, and engineers. Example capabilities: platform architecture, data architecture, platform engineering, provisioning and orchestration, modern application development, and continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD).

Security perspective. Achieves confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data and cloud workloads. Typical stakeholders: CISO, chief compliance officer, internal audit leaders, and security architects and engineers. Example capabilities: security governance, security assurance, identity and access management, threat detection, vulnerability management, infrastructure protection, data protection, application security, and incident response. Operations perspective. Ensures cloud services are delivered at a level that meets the needs of the business. Typical stakeholders: infrastructure and operations leaders, site reliability engineers, and IT service managers. Example capabilities: observability, event management, incident and problem management, change and release management, performance and capacity management, and patch management.

Exam tip

Memorize the split: Business, People, Governance are the business side; Platform, Security, Operations are the technical side. When a question names a role (CFO, CHRO, CISO, SRE), map the role to the perspective it most often owns. A CHRO question is almost always People; a CISO question is almost always Security.

Common trap

Cloud financial management sits in the Governance perspective, not Business. Business is about strategy and outcomes; Governance is about controlling the program, its risks, and its spending.

The four transformation phases

AWS CAF describes cloud transformation as an iterative journey with four phases. Organizations loop through them repeatedly, one initiative at a time, rather than doing each once.

1. Envision. Show how the cloud will accelerate business outcomes. Identify and prioritize transformation opportunities, and link each one to a strategic objective.
2. Align. Identify capability gaps across the six perspectives, find cross-organizational dependencies, and surface stakeholder concerns. The output is an action plan.
3. Launch. Deliver pilot initiatives in production and demonstrate incremental business value. Pilots should be impactful enough to influence the direction of the larger program.
4. Scale. Expand the successful pilots to the desired scale and make sure the business benefits are sustained. A memory hook: you envision the destination, align the people who must get there, launch a first expedition, and then scale it into a regular route.

Business outcomes of cloud transformation

AWS CAF ties all of this to four business outcomes. The exam likes to ask which outcome a scenario describes.

Outcome What it means Example

Reduced business risk Better reliability, security, and recovery Fewer outages; faster disaster recovery Improved ESG performance Environmental, social, and governance

gains
Lower carbon footprint from efficient data
centers

Increased revenue New productsand markets, faster Launching in a new country in weeks Increased operational efficiency Lower cost, higher productivity Staff spend less time patching servers

Real-world example

Real-world scenario: A regional insurer wants to launch a mobile claims app before a competitor does. Its leadership agrees on the goal (Envision), discovers that its operations team has no experience with containers and that security reviews take eight weeks (Align), ships a pilot claims app for one province (Launch), then rolls the platform out to every product line (Scale). The outcomes it reports to the board are increased revenue from the new app and increased operational efficiency from automated deployments.

3.3 The 7 Rs: migration strategies

When a company decides to migrate, it must decide what to do with each application. AWS describes seven common strategies, the 7 Rs. A large migration uses all of them; there is no single right answer for a whole portfolio.

1. Retire. Turn the application off. Portfolio discovery usually finds applications nobody uses, duplicate tools after a merger, or reports that no one reads. Retiring them saves money immediately and shrinks the migration. Example: A discovery exercise finds three separate intranet wiki servers. Two have had no logins in a year. They are archived and shut down.
2. Retain (revisit). Keep the application where it is for now. Reasons include a recent hardware investment, a pending upgrade, strict latency to on-premises equipment, or simply “not yet”. Retain is a decision, not a failure. Example: A factory’s machine-control system must sit next to the production line, so it stays on premises.
3. Rehost (“lift and shift”). Move the application to AWS without changing it, usually from on-premises servers to Amazon EC2 instances. It is fast and low-risk, and it is the most common choice in large, deadline-driven migrations. Once running in AWS, applications are often easier to optimize later.

Example: A company must exit its data center before the lease ends in nine months, so it rehosts 400 Windows and Linux servers using AWS Application Migration Service.

4. Relocate (“hypervisor-level lift and shift”). Move a large number of servers from an on-premises virtualization platform to a cloud version of the same platform, without buying new hardware or rewriting applications. The classic exam example is moving VMware workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS.

Example: A bank with 2,000 VMware virtual machines moves them as-is, keeping the same VMware management tools its staff already know.

5. Repurchase (“drop and shop”). Replace the application with a different product, typically a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering. This often means a new licensing model.

Example: A company drops its self-hosted customer relationship management (CRM) software and subscribes to a SaaS

Crm.

6. Replatform (“lift, tinker, and shift”). Move the application and make a few cloud optimizations without changing its core architecture.

Example: An application moves to EC2, but its self-managed MySQL database moves to Amazon RDS for MySQL so the team no longer handles backups and patching.

7. Refactor / re-architect. Reimagine how the application is built, typically using cloud-native features. This is driven by a strong business need: features, scale, or performance that the current design cannot deliver. It takes the most effort but offers the most long-term benefit.

Example: A monolithic e-commerce application is rebuilt as microservices on AWS Lambda and Amazon DynamoDB so each team can deploy independently and the site can handle holiday peaks.

The 7 Rs: relative effort vs. potential cloud benefit
Migration effort, time, and cost
low ........................................................ high
Long-term cloud benefit
low ........................ high
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Positions are relative and vary from application to application.

Figure 3.2: The 7 Rs plotted by relative effort and potential cloud benefit. Retire and Retain need little migration effort; Refactor needs the most effort but unlocks the most benefit.

Exam tip

Watch for keywords. “As quickly as possible”, “no code changes”, “lift and shift” = Rehost. “Move VMware without changes” = Relocate. “Managed database, minimal changes” = Replatform. “Switch to SaaS” = Repurchase. “Microservices”, “serverless”, “cloud-native”, “rewrite” = Refactor. “Decommission” = Retire. “Keep on premises for now” = Retain.

Common trap

Rehost and Replatform both move the application largely intact. The difference is the “tinker”: if the scenario changes any component to a managed AWS service (for example, moving the database to RDS), it is Replatform, not Rehost.

3.4 Migration phases: assess, mobilize, migrate and modernize

AWS describes a large migration in three phases. They line up with the CAF phases but are focused on the migration program itself.

The migration journey: three phases

1. Assess

Why move? What will it cost?

2. Mobilize

Close gaps, build foundation

3. Migrate and

Figure 3.3: The three phases of a large AWS migration and the tools commonly used in each.

Phase 1: Assess. Understand where you are today and build the business case. Organizations evaluate their readiness for the cloud, often with a Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA) that scores them across the CAF perspectives. They also estimate costs. Migration Evaluator is an AWS service that collects data about on-premises usage and produces a data-driven business case showing projected AWS costs. The output of this phase is a clear “why” and a rough “how much”. Phase 2: Mobilize. Close the gaps the assessment found and build the foundation. Teams run detailed discovery of servers and dependencies, choose a migration strategy (one of the 7 Rs) for each application, build a secure multi-account landing zone (often with AWS Control Tower), train staff, and migrate a few pilot workloads to build confidence and refine the process.

Phase 3: Migrate and modernize. Move workloads in waves, validate them, and cut over. Each wave follows a repeatable pattern: replicate, test, cut over, decommission the source. After workloads are running in AWS, teams continue to optimize and modernize, for example by moving to managed services or containers.

Good to know

Many organizations rehost first and modernize second. Getting out of the data center quickly stops the double-running costs, and once the application is in AWS it is easier and safer to replatform or refactor it in small steps.

3.5 AWS migration services

AWS offers a family of tools for discovering, moving, and tracking migrations. You do not need to know how to configure them for this exam, but you must know what each one is for.

Planning and tracking

AWS Migration Hub is a single place to track the progress of application migrations across multiple AWS and partner tools. You group servers into applications, see which migration tool is handling each server, and watch the status move from “not started” to “completed”. Migration Hub itself does not move anything; it is a dashboard and planning tool. AWS Application Discovery Service collects information about your on-premises servers: configuration, utilization (CPU, memory, disk, network), and the network connections between servers. You can gather data agentlessly from VMware vCenter or with an agent installed on each server. The data flows into Migration Hub, where it helps you understand dependencies and group servers into applications before you migrate them.

Good to know

AWS has been adding AI-assisted migration tooling, notably AWS Transform, which uses AI agents to help assess and migrate workloads such as VMware environments, mainframes, and .NET applications. AWS has also limited some older migration tools to existing customers. Product availability changes, so check the current AWS migration pages. The exam still uses the classic service names in this section.

In progress

Completed

Application Servers Migration tool Status
payroll-web 6 App Migration Svc Completed
orders-db 2 AWS DMS In progress
crm-legacy 4 App Migration Svc In progress
reporting 3 (not assigned) Not started

Servers come from Application Discovery Service or an import.

Migration Hub tracks status; the tools do the moving.

Figure 3.4: A simplified Migration Hub dashboard showing applications, the tool migrating each one, and migration status. (Illustration, not an actual AWS screenshot.)

Moving servers and applications

AWS Application Migration Service (AWS MGN) is the primary AWS service for rehosting (lift and shift). You install a replication agent on each source server (physical, virtual, or in another cloud). The agent continuously replicates the server’s disks at the block level to a low-cost staging area in your AWS account. When you are ready, you launch test instances, verify them, and then perform a cutover with only minutes of downtime. It replaced the older CloudEndure Migration and AWS Server Migration Service.

Moving databases

AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) migrates databases to AWS quickly and securely. The source database stays fully operational during the migration, which minimizes downtime. DMS supports homogeneous migrations (for example, Oracle to Oracle, or MySQL to Amazon RDS for MySQL) and heterogeneous migrations (for example, Oracle to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL). It can also replicate ongoing changes continuously, which is useful for keeping source and target in sync until cutover.

AWS Schema Conversion Tool (AWS SCT) handles the part DMS cannot do alone in a heterogeneous migration: converting the database schema (tables, views, stored procedures, functions) from one engine’s dialect to another. AWS also offers DMS Schema Conversion, the same capability built into the DMS console as a managed feature, so you do not need to install a desktop tool.

Exam tip

Same engine to same engine = DMS alone. Different engines = SCT (or DMS Schema Conversion) for the schema, then DMS for the data.

Moving files and data online

AWS DataSync is an online data transfer service that automates and accelerates moving large amounts of data between on-premises storage (NFS, SMB, HDFS, object storage) and AWS storage services such as Amazon S3, Amazon EFS, and Amazon FSx. It handles encryption, scheduling, data integrity checks, and network optimization. It can also move data between AWS storage services and from other clouds. Choose DataSync for one-time migrations or recurring transfers over the network.

AWS Transfer Family provides fully managed SFTP, FTPS, FTP, and AS2 endpoints that store files directly in Amazon S3 or Amazon EFS. Its typical use is not bulk migration but keeping existing file-exchange workflows working: your business partners keep using their SFTP clients, and the files land in S3 without you running an SFTP server.

Moving data offline: the Snow Family

When the network is too slow, too expensive, or unavailable, you can ship data on a physical device. The AWS Snow Family consists of rugged, secure, encrypted devices that AWS mails to you. You copy data onto the device locally, ship it back, and AWS loads it into Amazon S3.

AWS Snowball Edge is the current Snow Family device. It comes in storage-optimized and compute-optimized configurations, holds tens of terabytes or more per device, and can also run EC2 instances and Lambda functions for edge computing in disconnected locations such as ships, mines, or field hospitals. For larger datasets you order multiple devices.

Common trap

Older study material describes AWS Snowcone (a small, portable device) and AWS Snowmobile (a truck holding up to 100 PB). Both have been retired. If an exam question still mentions them, recognize them as members of the Snow Family for offline transfer, but do not choose them for new designs. AWS has also narrowed Snowball availability for new customers and steers many customers toward online transfer with DataSync, so check current availability.

Choosing online or offline transfer

A useful rule of thumb: a fully used 100 Mbps link moves roughly 1 TB per day; a 1 Gbps link moves roughly 10 TB per day. Real networks rarely run at 100 percent, so plan for less. If the transfer would take more than about a week, or would saturate the link that the business needs for daily work, offline transfer becomes attractive.

Online or offline? Choosing a data transfer method
Data to move to AWS
Is there usable network

connectivity at the site?

No
Yes
Can the link move the data
within the deadline without

hurting daily business?

Figure 3.5: Deciding between online and offline data transfer based on data size, bandwidth, and time available.

Real-world example

Real-world scenario: A film studio needs to move 400 TB of raw footage to Amazon S3 within three weeks. Its internet link is 500 Mbps, which would take more than two months even at full speed. The studio orders several Snowball Edge devices and ships the data. Meanwhile, new footage created during the project is sent over the network with DataSync, so nothing is missed.

Summary of migration services
Need Service
Track migrations in one place AWS Migration Hub
Inventory serversand dependencies Application Discovery Service
Rehost servers with minimal downtime Application Migration Service
Migratea database AWS DMS
Convert schema between engines AWS SCT / DMS Schema Conversion
Copy files over the network AWS DataSync
Managed SFTP/FTPS/FTP into S3 AWS Transfer Family
Ship data on a device AWS Snowball Edge
Build the cost business case Migration Evaluator

Hands-on lab

Hands-on mini lab: explore Migration Hub (no cost to look around)

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and type Migration Hub in the search bar.
2. Choose a home Region when prompted. Migration Hub stores tracking data in this one Region.
3. In the left navigation pane, open Discover and read the options for importing server data or using discovery tools.
4. Open Migrate, then Applications, and note that applications are groups of servers.
5. Open Tools to see which migration tools can report status to Migration Hub.
6. Do not install agents or start replication; the goal is only to recognize the layout. If the console shows a notice about new-customer availability, read it, since it reflects the current product status.

3.6 AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP)

The AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) is a comprehensive program that helps organizations migrate at scale. It combines:

A proven methodology built around the assess, mobilize, and migrate-and-modernize phases.

Tools to automate and accelerate migration.

Expertise from AWS Professional Services and qualified AWS Partners.

Funding, such as AWS credits and partner investment, to offset the costs of migration, including the period when you pay for both old and new environments.

Training to build cloud skills in the customer’s teams.

MAP is aimed at significant migrations, not a single small workload. When an exam question asks how a company can obtain guidance, partner help, and financial incentives to migrate many workloads, MAP is the answer.

Good to know

Other places to get migration help include AWS Professional Services (AWS’s own consulting team), AWS Partners found through AWS Partner Network and AWS Marketplace, and AWS Prescriptive Guidance, a free library of strategies and patterns.

Chapter 3 summary

AWS CAF is free guidance that helps organizations plan a cloud transformation; it has six perspectives grouped as business (Business, People, Governance) and technical (Platform, Security, Operations).

Each perspective contains foundational capabilities owned by specific stakeholders, such as the CFO for Business and Governance or the CISO for Security.

Transformation is iterative across four phases: Envision, Align, Launch, and Scale.

The four business outcomes are reduced business risk, improved ESG performance, increased revenue, and increased operational efficiency.

The 7 Rs are Retire, Retain, Rehost, Relocate, Repurchase, Replatform, and Refactor; effort and long-term benefit generally rise from Rehost toward Refactor.

Large migrations follow three phases: assess, mobilize, and migrate and modernize.

Migration Hub tracks; Application Discovery Service inventories; Application Migration Service rehosts servers; DMS migrates databases; SCT converts schemas.

DataSync moves files online; Transfer Family provides managed SFTP/FTPS/FTP; Snowball Edge moves data offline. Snowcone and Snowmobile are retired.

MAP combines methodology, tools, expert help, funding, and training for large migrations.

Key terms
Term Definition
AWS CAF Framework of guidance for cloud transformation, organized into
six perspectives
Perspective A group of related capabilities owned by aset of stakeholders

Foundational capability An organizational ability, such as risk management, that supports transformation

Envision / Align / Launch / Scale The four iterative phases ofa CAF transformation Rehost Liftand shift to AWS with no changes

Replatform Liftand shift with afew cloud optimizations
Refactor Re-architect using cloud-native features
Relocate Hypervisor-level move, such as VMware to VMware Cloud on

Aws

Repurchase Replace with a different product, often SaaS
AWS MGN Application Migration Service, for rehosting servers
AWS DMS Database Migration Service, with minimal downtime
AWS SCT Schema Conversion Tool, for heterogeneous migrations
AWS DataSync Online, automated transfer of files to AWS storage
Snowball Edge Physical device for offline datatransferand edge computing
MAP Migration Acceleration Program: methodology, tools, partners,
and funding
Practice questions

1. A company’s chief human resources officer is worried that staff lack cloud skills and that teams will resist new ways of working. Which AWS CAF perspective addresses these concerns?

A. Business B. People
C. Governance D. Operations

2. Which AWS CAF perspectives focus on technical capabilities? (Choose two.)

A. Platform B. Governance
C. Security D. Business
E. People

3. A company is in the AWS CAF phase where it identifies capability gaps across perspectives, uncovers dependencies between teams, and creates an action plan. Which phase is this?

A. Envision B. Align
C. Launch D. Scale

4. A CFO wants a capability that tracks cloud spending, sets budgets, and makes teams accountable for costs. In which AWS CAF perspective does cloud financial management belong?

A. Business B. Platform
C. Governance D. Operations

5. A retailer moves to AWS and reduces its data center energy use, which helps it meet its sustainability targets. Which AWS CAF business outcome does this represent?

A. Reduced business risk B. Increased revenue
C. Improved ESG performance D. Increased operational efficiency

6. A company must vacate its data center in six months. It wants to move 300 servers to AWS as quickly as possible without changing the applications. Which migration strategy should it use?

A. Refactor B. Rehost
C. Repurchase D. Retire

7. A company moves its application servers to Amazon EC2 and, at the same time, moves its self-managed PostgreSQL database to Amazon RDS. The application code is not changed. Which strategy is this?

A. Rehost B. Relocate
C. Replatform D. Refactor

8. A company replaces its on-premises email and collaboration servers with a SaaS subscription. Which strategy is this?

A. Repurchase B. Retain
C. Rehost D. Replatform

9. During discovery, a company finds that 15 percent of its applications have no active users. What should it do with them?

A. Rehost them to save time B. Retire them
C. Refactor them into microservices D. Relocate them to VMware Cloud on AWS

10. Which tool continuously replicates source servers at the block level to AWS and lets the company launch test instances before a short cutover?

A. AWS DataSync B. AWS Application Migration Service
C. AWS Migration Hub D. AWS Schema Conversion Tool

11. A company is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL. Which combination of tools is most appropriate? (Choose two.)

A. AWS Schema Conversion Tool B. AWS Transfer Family
C. AWS Database Migration Service D. AWS Snowball Edge
E. AWS Application Discovery Service

12. A company needs to understand which on-premises servers talk to each other and how heavily each is used before it plans migration waves. Which service gathers this information?

A. AWS Application Discovery Service B. AWS DataSync
C. AWS Migration Acceleration Program D. Amazon CloudWatch

13. A company wants a single place to see the migration status of all its applications, even though different teams use different migration tools. Which service should it use?

A. AWS Control Tower B. AWS Migration Hub
C. AWS Config D. AWS Application Migration Service

14. A research lab must move 600 TB to Amazon S3 in two weeks. Its shared internet connection is 200 Mbps. What is the most practical approach?

A. Use AWS DataSync over the existing internet connection B. Use AWS Transfer Family with SFTP
C. Order multiple AWS Snowball Edge devices D. Upload the files through the S3 console

15. A company’s business partners send daily files using SFTP. The company wants the files to land in Amazon S3 without running its own SFTP servers. Which service meets this need?

A. AWS DataSync B. AWS Transfer Family
C. AWS Storage Gateway D. Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration

16. A company wants to schedule recurring, automated copies of 20 TB from an on-premises NFS file server to Amazon EFS over its 10 Gbps Direct Connect link. Which service is the best fit?

A. AWS Snowball Edge B. AWS DataSync
C. AWS DMS D. AWS Migration Hub

17. A large enterprise wants AWS guidance, partner expertise, training, and financial incentives such as credits to migrate hundreds of workloads. What should it use?

A. AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) B. AWS Free Tier
C. AWS Trusted Advisor D. AWS Pricing Calculator

18. In which migration phase does a company build its landing zone, perform detailed portfolio discovery, and migrate a few pilot workloads?

A. Assess B. Mobilize
C. Migrate and modernize D. Scale

Answers and explanations

1. B. The People perspective covers culture, change management, and skills, and the CHRO is a key stakeholder. Business focuses on strategy and outcomes; Operations focuses on running workloads.
2. A, C. Platform, Security, and Operations are the technical perspectives. Governance, Business, and People are the business perspectives.
3. B. Align is about finding gaps, dependencies, and stakeholder concerns, then producing an action plan. Envision identifies opportunities; Launch delivers pilots; Scale expands them.
4. C. Cloud financial management is a Governance capability, alongside risk and benefits management. Business covers strategy and portfolio, not the control of spending.
5. C. Lower energy use and meeting sustainability targets are ESG (environmental, social, and governance) improvements. Operational efficiency would be the answer if the focus were lower cost or higher productivity.
6. B. Rehost (lift and shift) is the fastest way to move many servers without code changes. Refactor takes far longer; Repurchase replaces the applications; Retire turns them off.
7. C. Moving the database to a managed service while leaving the application unchanged is Replatform. Rehost would keep the self-managed database on EC2; Refactor would change the application’s architecture.
8. A. Replacing a product with a SaaS offering is Repurchase (“drop and shop”). Retain keeps it on premises; Rehost and Replatform keep the same software.
9. B. Applications with no users should be retired to save cost and reduce migration scope. Migrating them in any form wastes effort.
10. B. AWS Application Migration Service performs continuous block-level replication for rehosting with minimal cutover downtime. DataSync moves files, not whole servers; Migration Hub only tracks; SCT converts database schemas.
11. A, C. A heterogeneous migration needs SCT (or DMS Schema Conversion) to convert the schema and DMS to move the data. Transfer Family and Snowball Edge move files; Application Discovery Service inventories servers.
12. A. Application Discovery Service collects server configuration, utilization, and network dependency data. CloudWatch monitors AWS resources, not on-premises dependency mapping for migration.
13. B. Migration Hub provides a single dashboard for tracking migrations across AWS and partner tools. Application Migration Service is one of the tools it can track; Control Tower sets up multi-account environments.
14. C. At 200 Mbps, 600 TB would take most of a year online, so offline transfer with multiple Snowball Edge devices is the practical choice. DataSync, SFTP, and console uploads all depend on the slow link.
15. B. Transfer Family provides managed SFTP, FTPS, FTP, and AS2 endpoints backed by S3 or EFS. DataSync is for bulk or scheduled transfers between storage systems, not for receiving partner uploads over SFTP.
16. B. DataSync automates and schedules online transfers from NFS or SMB to S3, EFS, or FSx, and 20 TB moves easily over 10 Gbps. Snowball Edge is unnecessary with that much bandwidth; DMS is for databases.
17. A. MAP combines methodology, tools, AWS and partner expertise, training, and funding for large migrations. The Pricing Calculator only estimates costs; Trusted Advisor gives best-practice checks.
18. B. The mobilize phase closes readiness gaps: detailed discovery, landing zone, skills, and pilot migrations. Assess builds the business case; migrate and modernize moves workloads at scale. Scale is a CAF phase, not a migration phase.