Question

A company is migrating 300 physical and VMware-based servers running a mix of Windows and Linux workloads from an on-premises data center to AWS. Leadership mandates the fastest possible cutover with minimal application changes, but the migration team also wants to automatically install the CloudWatch agent and join instances to a domain immediately after each server boots in AWS. The team wants a single tool that handles block-level replication and supports these automated post-launch actions without manual intervention. Which approach best meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) with the replication agent installed on source servers, and configure post-launch actions and templates to run the required automation after test and cutover instances launch.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication tasks to move each server, then use a Systems Manager runbook to configure the instances.

Answer

Use AWS DataSync to copy the server volumes to Amazon S3, then launch EC2 instances from the copied data and manually run configuration scripts.

Answer

Export each server as a VM image, use VM Import/Export to create AMIs, and launch instances with a user data script that installs the agent and joins the domain.