SAP-C02 Accelerate Workload Migration and Modernization Practice Test 21 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is migrating its data warehouse from on-premises to Amazon Redshift. The current on-premises data warehouse runs on a proprietary MPP system. The company wants to minimize downtime and ensure data consistency. The company has a large volume of historical data (30 TB) and daily incremental updates of 10 GB. Which migration approach should the company use?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Snowball to transfer the historical data to Amazon S3, then use AWS DMS with ongoing CDC to replicate incremental changes until cutover. Using AWS DMS with CDC for incremental data allows zero-downtime migration by keeping the target in sync. A bulk export/import approach requires downtime for the final load. Using Snowball for historical data and DMS for incremental updates is efficient for large datasets.

Answer

Use an ETL tool to extract data from the source and load directly into Amazon Redshift during a maintenance window

Answer

Perform a full export of the on-premises database to flat files, transfer them over the network, and load into Amazon Redshift

Answer

Use AWS DMS with full load only, then schedule a downtime window for the final sync

Question 2

A company is modernizing a monolithic application by decomposing it into microservices. The application currently uses a single MySQL database. The company wants to use a polyglot persistence approach, with different microservices using the most appropriate database type. The team has limited experience with NoSQL databases. Which strategy should the team use to minimize risk during the migration?

Accepted Answer

Use the strangler fig pattern to incrementally replace parts of the monolith with microservices, starting with a non-critical function. Using the strangler fig pattern allows incremental migration, replacing parts of the monolith with microservices one at a time. This reduces risk because each microservice can be tested independently. Starting with a non-critical service provides learning opportunity without high impact.

Answer

Rewrite the entire application as microservices using a new database for each service from the start

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Migrate the entire monolith to a containerized application on Amazon ECS in one go

Answer

Use AWS DMS to replicate the monolith's database to multiple target databases simultaneously

Question 3

A company wants to migrate its on-premises virtualized workloads to AWS using the VMware Cloud on AWS service. The company currently uses VMware vSphere for virtualization. What is the primary benefit of using VMware Cloud on AWS for this migration?

Accepted Answer

It allows the company to continue using existing VMware management tools and processes. VMware Cloud on AWS allows organizations to use the same VMware tools and processes, minimizing the learning curve and operational changes. It does not automatically reduce costs, nor does it provide better performance or eliminate the need to refactor applications.

Answer

It provides better application performance compared to running on AWS native compute

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It reduces the total cost of ownership by eliminating the need for any hardware maintenance

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It eliminates the need to refactor applications for the cloud

Question 4

A company is migrating a large .NET application from Windows Server on-premises to AWS. The application uses a SQL Server database. The company wants to reduce licensing costs by using open-source alternatives where possible. However, the application code heavily uses SQL Server-specific features like CLR integration, linked servers, and T-SQL stored procedures. What is the most cost-effective migration strategy?

Accepted Answer

Rehost the application on Amazon EC2 Windows Server and use Amazon RDS for SQL Server with a license-included option. Replatforming the database to Amazon RDS for SQL Server retains the SQL Server-specific features while reducing operational overhead. Moving to Aurora PostgreSQL or MySQL would require significant code changes. Rehosting on EC2 SQL Server does not reduce licensing costs.

Answer

Rehost both application and database on Amazon EC2 with SQL Server licenses brought to AWS

Answer

Refactor the application to use a microservices architecture with separate databases

Answer

Replatform the database to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL and rewrite the database code to be compatible

Question 5

A company is migrating a legacy PHP application running on a single on-premises server to AWS. The application stores session data locally on the server's filesystem. The company wants to achieve high availability and elasticity for the application on AWS. What should the company do to handle session state in the new architecture?

Accepted Answer

Store session data in Amazon ElastiCache for Redis. Using ElastiCache for session storage decouples session state from individual servers, allowing the application to scale horizontally. Sticky sessions with an ALB ties a user to a specific instance, which reduces availability if that instance fails. Storing sessions on EFS is possible but slower than ElastiCache. Re-architecting to use Cognito is unnecessary for session state.

Answer

Configure an Application Load Balancer with sticky sessions enabled

Answer

Use Amazon EFS to share the session files across multiple EC2 instances

Answer

Refactor the application to use Amazon Cognito for session management

Question 6

A company wants to migrate its on-premises Active Directory to AWS Managed Microsoft AD to support Windows-based workloads on AWS. The company has a complex Active Directory structure with multiple domains, group policies, and trusts with external directories. Which migration approach should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Establish a forest trust between the on-premises AD and AWS Managed Microsoft AD, then gradually move resources to AWS. Setting up a trust between the on-premises AD and AWS Managed Microsoft AD allows gradual migration of resources. This maintains existing authentication and group policies during the transition. Replacing AD with IAM is not suitable for Windows workloads. Replicating the entire AD structure via AD Connector is not possible. A full rebuild is complex and risky.

Answer

Replace Active Directory with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for all authentication

Answer

Rebuild the entire Active Directory structure from scratch in AWS Managed Microsoft AD

Answer

Use AD Connector to proxy authentication requests from AWS to the on-premises AD

Question 7

Which TWO of the following are best practices for migrating a large-scale relational database to Amazon Aurora using AWS DMS? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Use multiple parallel DMS tasks to improve throughput. Using parallel tasks improves throughput. Validating data after migration ensures consistency. Disabling foreign keys may cause data integrity issues. Using largest instance type may not be cost-effective. Using CDC reduces downtime.

Answer

Disable foreign key constraints on the target database during migration to speed up the load

Answer

Use the largest DMS replication instance to maximize performance

Answer

Migrate while the source database is fully active without any downtime

Question 8

Which THREE of the following are common challenges when migrating a monolithic application to a microservices architecture on AWS? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Managing distributed transactions across multiple services. Distributed transactions, data consistency, and network latency are well-known challenges. Autoscaling is a benefit. Single database bottleneck can be solved with polyglot persistence.

Answer

Single database bottleneck when all services share the same database

Answer

Difficulty in scaling individual services independently

Question 9

Which TWO AWS services can be used together to automate the discovery and migration of on-premises servers to AWS? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

AWS Application Migration Service (MGN). AWS MGN automates server migration. AWS Application Discovery Service helps discover on-premises server inventory. AWS DMS is for databases. AWS SMS is deprecated. AWS DataSync is for file/object storage.

Answer

AWS DataSync

Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

Answer

AWS Server Migration Service (SMS)

Question 10

A migration engineer is setting up an AWS DMS task to migrate data from an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The engineer attaches this IAM policy to the DMS service role. The DMS task fails with an error indicating insufficient privileges. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The policy does not allow the dms:CreateEndpoint action. DMS needs permission to describe endpoints and test connections, which are not in the policy. The policy allows creating and starting tasks but not the prerequisite actions like creating endpoints. S3 access is correct if using S3 as a source/target, but the core issue is missing endpoint permissions.

Answer

The policy does not allow the s3:ListBucket action for the S3 bucket

Answer

The policy does not allow the dms:TestConnection action

Answer

The policy does not allow the rds:ModifyDBInstance action

Question 11

A migration engineer is using AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) to migrate a Windows server from on-premises. The engineer runs the command above and sees the source server is in the "READY_FOR_TEST" state. What should the engineer do next?

Accepted Answer

Launch a test instance to validate the migration. The READY_FOR_TEST state indicates the initial replication is complete and a test instance can be launched. The next step is to launch a test instance to validate the migration. Cutting over immediately without testing is risky. Resuming data replication is for troubleshooting. Checking the recommended instance type is optional but not the next required step.

Answer

Perform the cutover to the AWS environment

Answer

Modify the source server's recommended instance type to a smaller size

Answer

Resume data replication from the source server

Question 12

A company is migrating a legacy Java-based customer relationship management (CRM) system from on-premises to AWS. The application currently runs on a single physical server with a monolithic architecture. The application stores data in an Oracle database on a separate server. The company has purchased a third-party migration tool that can convert Oracle stored procedures to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-compatible code. The migration team has successfully migrated the database to Aurora PostgreSQL using AWS DMS with ongoing CDC. The application now runs on a single EC2 instance in a test environment. However, during load testing, the application experiences high latency and intermittent timeouts when accessing the database. The team notices that the application makes many short-lived database connections and uses a connection pool that was configured for the on-premises environment. The team has also observed that the application logs show a high number of connection timeouts. The company wants to modernize the application to be highly available and scalable on AWS. Which combination of actions should the team take to resolve the performance issues and achieve the company's goals?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the application on Amazon ECS with Fargate, and use Amazon RDS Proxy to manage database connections efficiently. Refactor the application to separate components into multiple microservices.. The issue is likely due to the connection pool being inefficient for the cloud environment and the monolithic architecture not scaling. Deploying the application as microservices on containers with an RDS Proxy for connection pooling addresses both performance and high availability. Simply increasing connection pool size may overwhelm the database. Using Lambda would require significant refactoring. Vertical scaling does not provide high availability.

Answer

Use Amazon ElastiCache to cache database query results and reduce the number of direct database connections. Keep the application on a single EC2 instance but use an Auto Scaling group with a minimum of one instance.

Answer

Increase the connection pool size in the application configuration to handle more concurrent requests. Then deploy the application on a larger EC2 instance to handle the load.

Answer

Migrate the application to run on AWS Lambda with a connection pool managed by the Lambda function. Use Amazon RDS Proxy to handle the database connections.

Question 13

A company is migrating a monolithic e-commerce application to AWS. The application currently runs on a single on-premises server running Windows Server and SQL Server. The company wants to minimize re-architecting effort and time to migrate. Which migration strategy should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Rehost the application on Amazon EC2 Windows instances with SQL Server. Rehost (lift-and-shift) involves moving the application as-is to AWS, minimizing changes and time. Option A (Retire) is not appropriate because the application is still needed. Option B (Refactor) requires significant re-architecting. Option D (Replatform) involves some optimization but still requires changes.

Answer

Retire the application and replace it with a SaaS solution

Answer

Refactor the application to use microservices on Amazon ECS

Answer

Replatform the application to use Amazon RDS for SQL Server

Question 14

A company is migrating workloads to AWS using AWS Application Migration Service (AWS MGN). The source servers are running on VMware vSphere. After installing the AWS Replication Agent on the source servers, the migration waves are set up. However, during a test cutover, the test instance fails to launch with an error 'Insufficient IP address space in the target VPC'. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The target VPC subnet does not have enough available IP addresses. The error 'Insufficient IP address space in the target VPC' indicates that the subnet used for test instances does not have enough available IP addresses to launch the instance. AWS MGN allocates IP addresses from the specified subnet during instance launch. Option A is incorrect because a CIDR mismatch would cause a different error, typically related to subnet configuration. Option B is incorrect because IAM permission issues would result in an access denied error, not an IP space error. Option D is incorrect because the service not being enabled would produce a different error (e.g., service not available). Therefore, the most likely cause is insufficient available IP addresses in the target VPC subnet.

Answer

The replication settings specify a subnet with an incorrect CIDR block

Answer

The IAM role for AWS MGN does not have permissions to create network interfaces

Answer

The AWS MGN service is not enabled in the target AWS Region

Question 15

A company is migrating a legacy .NET Framework 4.8 application to AWS. The application uses Windows authentication integrated with Active Directory and relies on a shared file system for configuration files. The company wants to minimize operational overhead and use managed services. Which combination of AWS services should the company use to modernize the application?

Accepted Answer

AWS Managed Microsoft AD, Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, and AWS Elastic Beanstalk for .NET on Windows. AWS Managed Microsoft AD provides Windows authentication integrated with Active Directory, FSx for Windows File Server provides a managed shared file system that supports Windows-native SMB protocol and NTFS permissions, and AWS Elastic Beanstalk for .NET on Windows minimizes operational overhead for hosting a .NET Framework 4.8 application. Option A (EFS) does not natively support Windows authentication or SMB protocol, making it unsuitable. Option B (RDS for SQL Server) is unnecessary as the application does not require a database. Option C (App Runner) does not support .NET Framework applications, and S3 cannot function as a Windows shared file system.

Answer

AWS Managed Microsoft AD, Amazon EFS, and AWS Elastic Beanstalk for .NET on Windows

Answer

Amazon Cognito, Amazon RDS for SQL Server, and AWS Lambda

Answer

AWS Directory Service for Microsoft AD, Amazon S3, and AWS App Runner