AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional SAP-C02 Practice Question

The correct answer is to use AWS Application Discovery Service to gather data about the on-premises servers. The AWS migration process is structured into phases, with the first being the 'Assess' phase. This phase is critical for understanding the existing environment, and a key activity is creating an inventory of applications and infrastructure. Given the large, poorly documented estate, automated discovery is the most effective initial step. AWS Application Discovery Service (with either agent-based or agentless collectors) is specifically designed to collect server specifications, performance data, running processes, and network dependencies. This data provides an objective, detailed foundation that can be fed into AWS Migration Hub to support TCO calculations, application grouping, dependency mapping, and migration planning.

Conducting manual interviews with application owners is a valid part of data enrichment, but it is not the most effective initial step for a large-scale discovery. This process is slow, subjective, and prone to inaccuracies, especially in an environment without good documentation. It should supplement, not replace, automated discovery. Starting a pilot migration is part of the 'Mobilize' or 'Migrate' phase, which should occur after an initial assessment and plan are in place. Performing a pilot without foundational data on dependencies and resource utilization is risky. Calculating the TCO is a key outcome and deliverable of the assessment phase, not the initial data collection method itself. Accurate TCO analysis requires the very data that automated discovery tools provide.