Accelerate Workload Migration and Modernization — AWS Certified Solutions Architect SAP-C02 practice questions

1200 on-prem VMs must migrate in 12 months but discovery is incomplete. Which is the BEST first phase?

1. Begin lift-and-shift immediately with AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) before completing dependency discovery in earnest
2. Ship the VMs to AWS via Snowmobile as the primary migration path for the entire portfolio of workloads on-premises
3. Use Application Discovery Service and Migration Hub Strategy Recommendations to inventory VMs and plan 7 Rs waves first
4. Refactor every application into serverless architectures on AWS before migrating any workload out of the on-premises data center

Answer: C — Use Application Discovery Service and Migration Hub Strategy Recommendations to inventory VMs and plan 7 Rs waves first

C) Discovery + Strategy Recommendations + waves is AWS-prescriptive. A) Skipping discovery risks moving zombies. B) Snowmobile is data-transfer, not VM migration. D) Refactor-first ignores timeline.

AWS DMS is BEST described as:

1. A service that migrates databases with full-load and change data capture (CDC)
2. A service that transfers on-premises files and directories to S3, EFS, or FSx
3. A service that lifts and shifts on-premises VMs by replicating server disks
4. A service that generates offline data-transfer devices for petabyte-scale migrations

Answer: A — A service that migrates databases with full-load and change data capture (CDC)

A) DMS migrates databases via full-load + CDC. B) That is DataSync. C) That is Application Migration Service (MGN). D) That is Snow Family.

A stateful PHP app with session affinity must move to AWS and incrementally modernize. Which sequence is BEST?

1. Drop session affinity immediately on cutover and accept the temporary user-visible breakage during the migration wave
2. Migrate directly to AWS Lambda for every request handler before externalizing session state to any shared cache tier
3. Lift-and-shift to EC2 behind ALB with sticky sessions, externalize sessions to ElastiCache Redis, then move to Fargate
4. Use an NLB without an ALB so cookie-based HTTP sticky sessions no longer factor into the load-balancing configuration

Answer: C — Lift-and-shift to EC2 behind ALB with sticky sessions, externalize sessions to ElastiCache Redis, then move to Fargate

C) Lift-shift with sticky → externalize to Redis → Fargate is canonical incremental modernization for stateful PHP. A) Breaks users. B) Skips externalization. D) NLB uses IP stickiness, not cookies.

A team is migrating Oracle to Aurora PostgreSQL with a target cutover window of under one hour. Which combination is BEST?

1. AWS Schema Conversion Tool for schema plus AWS DMS full-load and change data capture
2. Full mysqldump export followed by manual reload during a scheduled maintenance window
3. AWS DataSync configured to copy the Oracle datafiles directly into an Aurora storage volume
4. Snowball Edge devices shipped to AWS containing the full Oracle backup for one-time import

Answer: A — AWS Schema Conversion Tool for schema plus AWS DMS full-load and change data capture

A) SCT converts heterogeneous schema; DMS full-load + CDC minimizes downtime. B) Long dump/restore misses the window. C) DataSync does not migrate live database engines. D) Snowball offline transfer alone does not deliver CDC.

AWS Storage Gateway is BEST described as:

1. A CDN with edge caches, signed URLs, and Lambda@Edge for programmable request handling
2. A hybrid service exposing File, Volume, and Tape gateways backed by S3 and Glacier
3. A managed elastic block-storage service providing volumes attached to EC2 instances
4. A network attached storage service providing NFS filesystems within a single VPC

Answer: B — A hybrid service exposing File, Volume, and Tape gateways backed by S3 and Glacier

B) Storage Gateway provides File/Volume/Tape hybrid gateways. A) That is CloudFront. C) That is EBS. D) That is EFS.

A 200-node 5 PB HDFS Hadoop cluster must move to AWS with minimal app change and eventual storage/compute decoupling. Which is BEST?

1. Move all HDFS data to Amazon EBS volumes and continue running Hadoop with local block storage as the persistent data layer
2. Migrate the Hadoop workload directly to Amazon Redshift and rewrite MapReduce jobs into SQL for the analytics warehouse
3. Lift-and-shift to EMR on EC2 with EMRFS, progressively migrate HDFS to S3, and adopt EMR Serverless or EMR on EKS later
4. Replace Hadoop entirely with AWS Lambda functions triggered by S3 events to process the historical data at rest incrementally

Answer: C — Lift-and-shift to EMR on EC2 with EMRFS, progressively migrate HDFS to S3, and adopt EMR Serverless or EMR on EKS later

C) EMR + progressive S3 migration + EMRFS is AWS-prescriptive Hadoop migration. A) Keeps storage coupled. B) Skips the lake. D) Lambda doesn't run Hadoop.

400 TB on-prem NFS must migrate over a 1 Gbps link with minimum downtime. Which approach is BEST?

1. Migrate the entire 400 TB via DataSync over the existing 1 Gbps link during a scheduled maintenance window at once
2. Upload the entire 400 TB via S3 multipart uploads from an on-premises client with parallel PUT operations across the link
3. Seed data with Snowball Edge devices, then use DataSync for ongoing delta sync until a planned quiesce-and-cutover
4. Configure Amazon FSx for OpenZFS with cross-Region replication from the on-premises NFS server directly to the FSx endpoint

Answer: C — Seed data with Snowball Edge devices, then use DataSync for ongoing delta sync until a planned quiesce-and-cutover

C) Snowball for bulk + DataSync for delta is AWS-prescriptive for large-data low-downtime. A) 400 TB over 1 Gbps is ~37 days at line rate. B) Doesn't address delta sync. D) FSx doesn't replicate from on-prem.

Database Migration Service (DMS)?

Migrate databases. Heterogeneous (Oracle → Aurora) or homogeneous.

Storage Gateway?

Hybrid storage. File, Volume, Tape Gateway. On-prem accesses S3/Glacier.

AWS Outposts?

AWS hardware in your data center. Hybrid for low-latency or data residency.