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Difficulty: Very hardAssess and Select Migration Strategy (7 Rs)

An enterprise is planning to migrate a critical media management platform to AWS within a tight 3-month timeline. The platform consists of the following components:

1. DRM Licensing Engine: Runs on Windows Server 2012 R2. It uses a proprietary hardware-bound licensing mechanism requiring specific kernel-level driver access and physical motherboard signatures that cannot be virtualized or emulated on cloud hypervisors.
2. Video Encoding System: A resource-intensive custom C++ application that processes raw video streams using GPU acceleration. The enterprise plans to modernize this to a serverless architecture using AWS Elemental MediaConvert and AWS Lambda in the future, but current resource constraints prevent any code changes or refactoring during the 3-month migration phase.
3. Metadata Catalog: Runs on a highly customized on-premises Microsoft SQL Server database. It utilizes proprietary SQL Server Common Language Runtime (CLR) integration and extensive SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages for data processing. The business wants to migrate this catalog to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL to eliminate commercial licensing costs and reduce administrative overhead, which requires complete schema conversion and rewriting of the CLR/SSIS logic.
4. Web Frontend: A stateless Node.js application running on Ubuntu VMs. The enterprise wants to migrate this component to AWS to minimize operating system management overhead, but they must keep the application code unchanged.

Which combination of migration strategies represents the most appropriate path for each component to meet the enterprise's requirements and timeline?

  1. A
    Rehost the DRM Licensing Engine to Amazon EC2 bare-metal instances; Rehost the Video Encoding System to GPU-enabled Amazon EC2 instances; Replatform the Metadata Catalog by migrating it to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL; Refactor the Web Frontend by rewriting the Node.js application to run on AWS Lambda.
  2. Retain the DRM Licensing Engine on-premises; Rehost the Video Encoding System to GPU-enabled Amazon EC2 instances; Refactor the Metadata Catalog by converting the database engine to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, converting the schema, and rewriting CLR and SSIS logic; Replatform the Web Frontend by containerizing it to run on Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate.Answer
  3. C
    Retain the DRM Licensing Engine on-premises; Replatform the Video Encoding System by migrating it to AWS Elemental MediaConvert and AWS Lambda; Replatform the Metadata Catalog by migrating it to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL using the AWS Schema Conversion Tool (SCT); Rehost the Web Frontend to Amazon EC2 instances running Ubuntu.
  4. D
    Retain the DRM Licensing Engine on-premises; Refactor the Video Encoding System by containerizing it to run on AWS Fargate; Rehost the Metadata Catalog by migrating it to Amazon EC2 instances running SQL Server; Replatform the Web Frontend by containerizing it to run on Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate.

Answer

Retain the DRM Licensing Engine on-premises; Rehost the Video Encoding System to GPU-enabled Amazon EC2 instances; Refactor the Metadata Catalog by converting the database engine to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, converting the schema, and rewriting CLR and SSIS logic; Replatform the Web Frontend by containerizing it to run on Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate.
The correct strategy matches the technical constraints. The DRM Licensing Engine must be retained because its hardware-bound license cannot be virtualized. The Video Encoding System must be rehosted due to the 3-month window and lack of development resources. The Metadata Catalog requires database engine conversion and code rewrite (CLR/SSIS), classifying it as Refactor. The Web Frontend can be containerized and run on Fargate, which is Replatform.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the DRM Licensing Engine constraints.
The DRM licensing engine requires physical hardware bindings (motherboard signatures) and kernel-level drivers that are incompatible with cloud virtualization or emulation, meaning it cannot be migrated to AWS.
Since the DRM system cannot run on AWS, the only viable option is to keep it on-premises, which maps to the Retain migration strategy.
2
Evaluate the Video Encoding System requirements and limitations.
Although a future serverless refactoring is desired, the immediate migration must be completed within 3 months with zero code changes or refactoring.
The system must be migrated as-is to GPU-enabled Amazon EC2 instances using the Rehost (lift-and-shift) strategy to meet the strict timeline constraint.
3
Determine the strategy for migrating the Metadata Catalog from SQL Server to Aurora PostgreSQL.
Migrating from SQL Server to Aurora PostgreSQL represents a heterogeneous database migration. This requires schema conversion and rewriting database logic (CLR and SSIS packages) to run on PostgreSQL.
Because this migration involves changing the database engine and making application/database code modifications, it represents the Refactor (Re-architect) strategy, not Replatforming.
4
Select the migration path for the Web Frontend.
The web frontend is a stateless Node.js application. Operating system management overhead can be minimized by containerizing the application and hosting it on Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate.
Because containerization optimizes the deployment model without changing the application's core code or architecture, this represents the Replatform (lift, tinker, and shift) strategy.

Key Concept

Selecting and distinguishing the AWS 7 Rs migration strategies (Retain, Rehost, Replatform, Refactor) based on technical dependencies, business goals, and timeline constraints.

Alternative Method

Utilize AWS Migration Evaluator or Cloud Migration Factory patterns to evaluate target dependencies. Hardware-bound licensing dependencies are a classic trigger for the Retain strategy, and heterogeneous database migrations involving engine switches and stored procedure/library rewrites are classified as Refactor/Re-architect.
Estimated Time:3m 0s
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Assess and Select Migration Strategy (7 Rs)

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