Question

Difficulty: Very hardUnderstand the benefits of and strategies for migration to the AWS Cloud

A municipal energy utility provider plans to migrate its legacy customer billing portal to AWS. The portal consists of a Java-based application running on local servers and an on-premises Microsoft SQL Server database. The provider wants to eliminate the administrative burden of patching operating systems, managing database backups, and provisioning hardware, but has strict constraints that prohibit any modifications to the application's core codebase or SQL query structures.

To achieve this, the migration team decides to deploy the Java application code onto AWS Elastic Beanstalk and migrate the database to Amazon RDS for SQL Server.

Which migration strategy is this provider employing?

  1. A
    Rehosting
  2. ReplatformingAnswer
  3. C
    Refactoring
  4. D
    Repurchasing

Answer

The correct strategy is replatforming, as the company is adopting managed cloud platforms to reduce operational overhead without modifying the core application code.
The correct answer is replatforming. Replatforming (often referred to as 'lift-tinker-and-shift') involves moving applications to the cloud while making minor optimizations to take advantage of cloud benefits—such as adopting managed database services (Amazon RDS) or platform-as-a-service solutions (AWS Elastic Beanstalk) to reduce operational overhead—without changing the core application architecture or code. This aligns perfectly with the provider's goal to eliminate administrative tasks like patching and backups while keeping the codebase intact.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the business requirements and technical constraints of the migration scenario.
The utility provider wants to eliminate administrative tasks (OS patching, database backups) but cannot modify the application's core codebase or database queries.
This establishes the boundary conditions for the migration strategy, eliminating strategies that require code modification (Refactoring) or changing the product entirely (Repurchasing).
2
Evaluate the planned target architecture on AWS.
The provider plans to move the Java application to AWS Elastic Beanstalk and migrate the SQL Server database to Amazon RDS.
This step identifies that the provider is adopting managed platform services rather than simply moving virtual machines to EC2.
3
Classify the migration strategy based on the modifications and target AWS services.
The strategy is identified as Replatforming (lift-tinker-and-shift).
By replacing self-managed infrastructure components with managed services (RDS and Elastic Beanstalk) to optimize operations without changing core application code, the company is executing a replatforming strategy.

Key Concept

Identifying AWS Migration Strategies (6 Rs)
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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