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Cloud Digital Leader Practice Question: Wants to modernize its on-premises applications
An organization wants to modernize its on-premises applications. The IT team identifies three types of applications: legacy apps that can only move with significant refactoring, custom-built apps that can be containerized and moved as-is, and applications that can be replaced entirely by SaaS solutions. This categorization approach is called what?
⚠ Common exam trap
The GCDL exam often tests the 6 Rs framework by describing a specific migration scenario and asking for the correct 'R' term; the trap here is confusing 'application portfolio assessment' with generic IT planning terms like capacity planning or SDLC, which are unrelated to migration strategy categorization.
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
✓
Application portfolio assessment using migration strategies (the 6 Rs framework)
The scenario describes categorizing applications based on their migration path: legacy apps requiring refactoring, custom apps suitable for containerization, and apps replaceable by SaaS. This directly aligns with the '6 Rs' framework (Rehost, Replatform, Refactor, Repurchase, Retire, Retain) used in application portfolio assessment for cloud migration. Option B is correct because the 6 Rs provide a structured way to evaluate and classify each application's optimal migration strategy.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Disaster recovery planning
Why it's wrong here
Disaster recovery planning is concerned with business continuity—defining Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs), failover procedures, and data replication strategies to restore operations after a disruption. The scenario, however, is about determining which migration strategy applies to each application, not about building resilience for existing systems. Disaster recovery is a separate workstream that may run in parallel, but it does not involve categorizing applications into the 6 Rs.
- ✓
Application portfolio assessment using migration strategies (the 6 Rs framework)
Why this is correct
The 6 Rs framework is the industry-standard approach for application portfolio assessment during cloud migration, categorizing each application into one of six strategies—Rehost (lift-and-shift), Replatform, Refactor (re-architect), Repurchase, Retire, or Retain. This categorization directly determines the migration path, effort, and business value for each workload, which aligns with the scenario's focus on classifying applications for migration planning. It is not simply a technical decision but a portfolio-level analysis that informs sequencing, cost, and risk.
- ✗
Capacity planning for on-premises servers
Why it's wrong here
Capacity planning for on-premises servers is fundamentally about forecasting future resource requirements—such as CPU, memory, storage, and network—based on historical utilization, growth trends, and anticipated workloads. While such planning may inform the size of target instances during a rehost or replatform, the scenario describes categorizing applications by migration strategy, not calculating hardware dimensions. This option is wrong because it addresses infrastructure sizing, not the strategic classification of applications for migration.
- ✗
Software development lifecycle (SDLC) planning
Why it's wrong here
The software development lifecycle (SDLC) describes the stages of creating or modifying software—requirements gathering, design, coding, testing, deployment, and maintenance—typically using models like waterfall or agile. In contrast, cloud migration portfolio assessment evaluates existing applications to decide whether to rehost, replatform, refactor, repurchase, retire, or retain them. This option is wrong because the scenario is about migrating running workloads, not about the iterative process of building new software.
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Related to this question
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Cloud Digital Transformation
Key term
Cloud migration
Cloud migration is the process of moving digital assets like data, applications, and IT resources from on-premises data centers to the cloud, or from one cloud environment to another.
Key term
Organization
An Organization is a top-level container in Google Cloud that represents your company or entities and serves as the root node for all your cloud resources, policies, and access control.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This GCDL practice question is part of Courseiva's free Google Cloud certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the GCDL exam.