AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C02) — Question 297

A company is planning to migrate its on-premises VMware cluster of 120 VMs to AWS. The VMs have many different operating systems and many custom software packages installed. The company also has an on-premises NFS server that is 10 TB in size. The company has set up a 10 Gbps AWS Direct Connect connection to AWS for the migration.

Which solution will complete the migration to AWS in the LEAST amount of time?

Answer options

• A. Export the on-premises VMs and copy them to an Amazon S3 bucket. Use VM Import/Export to create AMIs from the VM images that are stored in Amazon S3. Order an AWS Snowball Edge device. Copy the NFS server data to the device. Restore the NFS server data to an Amazon EC2 instance that has NFS configured.
• B. Configure AWS Application Migration Service with a connection to the VMware cluster. Create a replication job for the VMS. Create an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system. Configure AWS DataSync to copy the NFS server data to the EFS file system over the Direct Connect connection.
• C. Recreate the VMs on AWS as Amazon EC2 instances. Install all the required software packages. Create an Amazon FSx for Lustre file system. Configure AWS DataSync to copy the NFS server data to the FSx for Lustre file system over the Direct Connect connection.
• D. Order two AWS Snowball Edge devices. Copy the VMs and the NFS server data to the devices. Run VM Import/Export after the data from the devices is loaded to an Amazon S3 bucket. Create an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system. Copy the NFS server data from Amazon S3 to the EFS file system.

Correct answer: B

Explanation

AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) provides a highly automated, block-level replication mechanism that minimizes downtime and migration effort for diverse operating systems and custom software. Utilizing AWS DataSync over the existing 10 Gbps Direct Connect connection is the fastest way to transfer 10 TB of NFS data directly to Amazon EFS, avoiding the physical transit delays of Snowball devices. Recreating VMs manually or using VM Import/Export would be significantly slower and more prone to configuration errors.