Cloud Deployment and Migration Flashcards

A company is planning to migrate a large, complex application with many interdependencies from their on-premises data center to a public cloud. The business requires that the application remains fully functional for all users throughout the migration process, with no downtime. Which migration cutover approach is MOST suitable for this scenario?

Answer: Phased migration

A phased migration involves moving users, data, or application components in stages or batches over time. This approach allows for coexistence between the on-premises and cloud environments, ensuring that the application remains available to all users throughout the process. It is ideal for large, complex systems where a single cutover event (like a 'big bang' migration) would be too risky and disruptive.

An organization is performing a cloud readiness assessment for a legacy, mission-critical application. The assessment reveals the application has significant dependencies on specific hardware and an outdated operating system, making a direct 'lift-and-shift' migration impossible. The organization decides to replace the application entirely with a modern, commercially available SaaS solution that provides similar functionality. According to the '7 Rs' of cloud migration, which strategy is being implemented?

Answer: Repurchase

The 'Repurchase' strategy, also known as 'drop-and-shop,' involves moving to a different product, often a SaaS platform, that replaces an existing application. This is a common choice when a legacy system is difficult to migrate and a suitable modern alternative exists.

A cloud engineer needs to migrate an application running on a physical server in a data center to a virtual machine in a private cloud. The process involves creating a disk image of the physical server and converting it into a virtual disk format compatible with the target hypervisor. What is this type of migration commonly called?

Answer: P2V (Physical-to-Virtual)

P2V (Physical-to-Virtual) migration is the process of converting and migrating an operating system, applications, and data from a physical server to a virtual machine. This is a common first step in virtualization and cloud adoption journeys.

During the planning phase of a large-scale cloud migration, the project manager insists on creating a detailed document that outlines the specific steps and criteria for reverting to the original on-premises environment if the migration fails or introduces critical issues post-cutover. What is this essential planning component called?

Answer: A rollback plan

A rollback plan is a crucial part of any migration strategy that documents the procedures to reverse the changes and restore the previous, stable environment in case of a failed deployment. This plan minimizes business impact and downtime by providing a clear path to revert to the source system.

A company wants to migrate its on-premises application to the cloud with minimal changes to the application's code and architecture. However, they want to take advantage of some cloud-native features, such as managed database services (e.g., Amazon RDS) instead of continuing to manage their own database server on a virtual machine. Which of the '7 Rs' of cloud migration BEST describes this approach?

Answer: Replatform

Replatforming, sometimes called 'lift, tinker, and shift,' involves making a few cloud-specific optimizations to an application during the migration process without changing its core architecture. Moving from a self-managed database on a VM to a managed database service is a classic example of replatforming.

Which of the following would be performed during the assessment phase of a cloud migration to identify application interdependencies, server configurations, and performance metrics?

Answer: Automated discovery and analysis

The assessment phase is the initial step in a migration where the organization gathers detailed information about the existing IT landscape. Automated discovery and analysis tools are used to scan the environment, inventory applications and infrastructure, map dependencies, and collect performance data to inform the migration strategy.