CLF-C02 Cloud Concepts Practice Question
A company is assessing their on-premises environment before migrating to AWS. Which AWS service helps discover on-premises servers, profile their utilization, and create a business case for cloud migration?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse AWS Migration Hub as the discovery tool, when in fact Migration Hub only aggregates and tracks data from other services like Application Discovery Service, but does not perform the discovery itself.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
AWS Application Discovery Service
AWS Application Discovery Service is designed to gather information about on-premises data centers, including server specifications, utilization metrics, and network dependencies. It provides this data to help build a detailed business case for migration, including cost projections and migration planning. This directly matches the requirement to discover servers, profile utilization, and create a business case.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Migration Hub
Why it's wrong here
AWS Migration Hub is a tracking and orchestration console that shows the progress of migrations across multiple tools, but it does not perform any discovery of on-premises resources. To populate its status dashboards, it actually relies on data collected by AWS Application Discovery Service or other migration tools. Therefore, selecting Migration Hub would confuse the centralized tracking plane with the underlying discovery mechanism that this customer needs.
- ✓
AWS Application Discovery Service
Why this is correct
AWS Application Discovery Service directly discovers on-premises servers by using agentless discovery via VMware connectors or agent-based software installed on each host. It captures server configuration, CPU/memory utilization, and network dependencies between applications, which are exactly the inputs needed to group servers into migration waves and build a business case. This makes it the correct service for the stated planning requirements.
- ✗
AWS Database Migration Service
Why it's wrong here
AWS Database Migration Service is a purpose-built tool for moving databases to AWS with minimal downtime using continuous replication, but it only touches database endpoints and doesn't profile server inventories or inter-server dependencies. It cannot provide the rack-and-stack view of an on-premises fleet that is required for migration planning. Because the customer's need is discovery and profiling, not database replication, DMS is the wrong choice.
- ✗
AWS Server Migration Service
Why it's wrong here
AWS Server Migration Service, now largely replaced by AWS Application Migration Service (MGN), is a lift-and-shift replication tool that copied entire VMware VMs to Amazon EC2 as immutable images. It was not designed to be a discovery mechanism: it doesn't report on existing server utilization or map application dependencies before migration. Hence, choosing SMS would be solving the replication problem rather than the discovery/profiling problem posed in the scenario.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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