SAP-C02 Practice Set: Migration and Modernization
SAP-C02 is being retired: the last day to take this exam is Nov 16, 2026.
Migration and Modernization is a recurring theme in the AWS Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C02) exam. About 20% of the exam comes from this domain. The 5 questions below come with a full explanation of why each option is right or wrong.
AWS Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C02) · Migration and Modernization · 5 questions with answers and explanations
Question 1 of 5
A company tracks migration progress across many tools and wants a central view of application migration status. Which service helps?
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✅ Answer: B
Difficulty: applied · Topic: AWS Migration Hub
Tracking a large migration
A large migration uses many tools at once: discovery tools inventory servers, AWS Application Migration Service rehosts servers, AWS DMS moves databases, and partner tools may handle other workloads. Leaders need one place to see which applications are not started, in progress or completed.
AWS Migration Hub
AWS Migration Hub is that central view.
• Servers and databases are grouped into applications.
• Integrated AWS and partner migration tools report status updates to the hub.
• The team sees progress per application in one dashboard, regardless of which tool performs the move.
• Availability note: since November 7, 2025, Migration Hub is no longer open to new customers; existing customers can keep using it, and AWS recommends AWS Transform for new migration and modernization projects.
Why each option works or fails
• ✗ A. Control Tower: Control Tower builds and governs a multi-account landing zone with guardrails; it does not track the progress of individual application migrations.
• ✓ B. Migration Hub (correct): it aggregates status from AWS and partner migration tools and shows progress per application in one place, which is exactly the central view requested.
• ✗ C. Health Dashboard: the AWS Health Dashboard reports AWS service events and scheduled changes that affect your resources, not migration status.
• ✗ D. Well-Architected Tool: it reviews workloads against best-practice pillars and records improvement plans; it has no view of migration waves or tool status.
🎯 Key idea: Migration Hub is the single pane for migration progress across tools; Control Tower, Health and Well-Architected cover governance, service events and design reviews.
Question 2 of 5
A finance team building a migration business case using AWS Migration Evaluator's QuickInsights report finds the projected savings lower than expected. A deeper review reveals the on-premises TCO baseline excluded data center facility costs, existing software license true-up fees, and staff time spent on patching. What should the team do to produce a more accurate TCO comparison?
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✅ Answer: D
Difficulty: advanced · Topic: AWS Migration Evaluator, AWS Pricing Calculator, AWS Cost Explorer
Why TCO baselines go wrong
A TCO comparison has two sides. The AWS side is fairly easy to price. The on-premises side is where cases fail, because many costs never appear on a server invoice:
• Facilities: floor space, power, cooling, physical security.
• Licensing: support renewals and true-up fees.
• Labor: time spent patching, racking, backing up and troubleshooting.
Leave these out and the on-premises baseline looks cheaper than it is, so projected savings shrink.
Quick view versus detailed assessment
Migration Evaluator's Quick Insights gives a fast, largely automated summary of projected AWS cost from the collected data. A more detailed assessment and business case, typically prepared with AWS migration specialists or a partner, lets you add the company's actual facility, licensing and staffing costs so the on-premises side reflects reality.
Example: adding power, space and patching hours to a 500-server estate can change the savings figure substantially.
Note: AWS Transform assessments now also build the TCO business case from a server inventory, using agentic AI, and can import a Migration Evaluator Quick Insights file. SAP-C03 does not list Migration Evaluator as in scope, so for SAP-C03 expect AWS Transform for this job; this question follows the SAP-C02 guide.
Why each option works or fails
• ✗ A. Assume costs already included: the review showed those costs were missing from the baseline, so proceeding would knowingly present understated savings.
• ✗ B. Cost Explorer after migration: Cost Explorer only reports AWS spend after the fact; it cannot supply the on-premises costs, and the case is needed before approval.
• ✗ C. Pricing Calculator only: the calculator prices the AWS side from manual inputs; it drops the utilization-based analysis and still has no on-premises cost baseline.
• ✓ D. Detailed Migration Evaluator assessment (correct): it lets the team add facilities, licensing true-ups and labor to the on-premises baseline, producing a complete TCO comparison before the budget decision.
🎯 Key idea: A credible TCO needs the hidden on-premises costs (facilities, licensing, labor) in the baseline; enrich the Migration Evaluator assessment rather than switching tools.
Question 3 of 5
A company migrating a web application wants to replace an on-premises load balancer and SSL termination with managed services. Which design fits?
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✅ Answer: D
Difficulty: advanced · Topic: Elastic Load Balancing, AWS Certificate Manager
Managed load balancing and TLS on AWS
On premises, a hardware load balancer often spreads traffic and terminates SSL/TLS. On AWS, the managed equivalent for web applications is the Application Load Balancer (ALB).
• An ALB is deployed across subnets in multiple Availability Zones, and AWS scales and patches it.
• HTTPS listeners terminate TLS using certificates from AWS Certificate Manager (ACM). Public ACM certificates used with an ALB are free and renew automatically.
• Health checks stop routing to failed targets, and rules can route by path or host, for example /api/* to one target group.
Example
The listener on port 443 uses the ACM certificate for www.example.com, forwards to an Auto Scaling group in two AZs, and a Route 53 alias record points the domain to the ALB.
Why each option works or fails
• ✗ A. Route 53 simple routing to one instance: DNS pointing at one public IP spreads nothing and has no failover; if that instance fails, the site is down, and TLS still has to be handled on the instance.
• ✗ B. Self-run load balancer on EC2 in one AZ: it is not a managed service, has to be patched and scaled by the company, and a single instance in one AZ is a single point of failure.
• ✗ C. NAT gateway balancing traffic: a NAT gateway only lets private resources start outbound connections; it cannot accept inbound client traffic or distribute requests.
• ✓ D. ALB with ACM across multiple AZs (correct): it replaces both the load balancer and SSL termination with managed, highly available services, with no certificate renewals or load balancer servers to maintain.
🎯 Key idea: Replace on-premises load balancers and SSL offload with a multi-AZ ALB using ACM certificates, not DNS to one host or self-managed instances.
Question 4 of 5
A company wants a data-driven business case estimating AWS costs for its on-premises estate, based on actual utilization, before committing to migration. Which option fits?
Show answer
✅ Answer: C
Difficulty: advanced · Topic: AWS Migration Evaluator
Building a migration business case
A credible business case compares today's cost with the projected AWS cost for the same workloads. Using list prices for current server sizes overstates AWS cost, because many servers are overprovisioned and licensing options change the price.
AWS Migration Evaluator
• It collects actual utilization with an agentless collector or imports data from existing tools and inventory exports.
• It models right-sized EC2 instances based on measured usage, compares purchase options, and models licensing, such as bring-your-own-license versus license-included Windows and SQL Server.
• The output is a directional business case (Quick Insights and a detailed report) that leaders can use before committing.
Example: 1,200 VMs averaging 15 percent CPU are mapped to smaller instances with Savings Plans pricing, showing a projected annual cost next to the current data center cost.
Note: AWS Transform assessments now also build the TCO business case from a server inventory, using agentic AI, and can import a Migration Evaluator Quick Insights file. SAP-C03 does not list Migration Evaluator as in scope, so for SAP-C03 expect AWS Transform for this job; this question follows the SAP-C02 guide.
Why each option works or fails
• ✗ A. Free Tier calculator per server: the Free Tier is a limited allowance of free usage, not an estate-wide cost model, and pricing servers one by one ignores utilization and licensing.
• ✗ B. Spreadsheet with list prices: sizing from current specs and list prices ignores real utilization and right-sizing, so the estimate is inaccurate and not data-driven.
• ✓ C. Migration Evaluator with collected utilization (correct): it produces a data-driven, right-sized cost projection and business case from how servers are actually used.
• ✗ D. Inspector security report: Inspector reports vulnerabilities on AWS resources. It produces no cost estimate and does not assess on-premises estates.
🎯 Key idea: A right-sized, utilization-based migration cost case comes from Migration Evaluator, not from list-price spreadsheets or security tools.
Question 5 of 5
A global enterprise configured AWS Migration Hub with its home Region set to us-east-1 and has tracked migrations there for six months. A newly onboarded regional team in Europe configured its AWS Application Migration Service replication and Migration Hub tracking using eu-west-1 as the home Region. The central PMO now cannot see the European team's migration status in the us-east-1 Migration Hub console. What is the cause, and what should be done?
Show answer
✅ Answer: D
Difficulty: advanced · Topic: AWS Migration Hub
What the Migration Hub home Region is
AWS Migration Hub is a single place to track discovery and migration progress across tools such as Application Migration Service and Database Migration Service. Each account chooses a home Region, and all discovery and tracking data for that account is stored and shown there.
• The home Region is only where tracking data lives; migrations can still target any Region.
• The console in the home Region shows the consolidated view. Data reported to a different home Region is not merged in.
• Availability note: Migration Hub stopped accepting new customers on November 7, 2025, and AWS recommends AWS Transform for new migration programs; existing customers can continue to use it.
What happens with two home Regions
If one team reports to us-east-1 and another to eu-west-1, the tracking data ends up in two separate places. Nothing syncs them, so a PMO watching us-east-1 never sees the European work.
Example: the European team can keep replicating servers into eu-west-1, but its Migration Hub status must be reported to the same home Region the PMO uses.
Why each option works or fails
• ✗ A. Automatic cross-Region sync: Migration Hub does not replicate tracking data between home Regions; that is exactly why the PMO cannot see the European status.
• ✗ B. Delete and recreate migration jobs in us-east-1: the migration target Region is not the problem; replication can continue into eu-west-1. Only the tracking home Region needs to be aligned.
• ✗ C. Unresolvable, separate hubs forever: unified visibility is the purpose of Migration Hub; it is achieved by standardizing on one home Region.
• ✓ D. One home Region for everyone (correct): Migration Hub stores tracking data only in the configured home Region, so all teams must report to the same one, here us-east-1, to get a single consolidated view.
🎯 Key idea: Migration Hub consolidates data in one home Region; migrations can go to any Region, but every team must report to the same home Region.
📊 Set profile
Exam: SAP-C02 · 75 questions · 180 minutes · passing score 750
This set: 4 advanced, 1 applied · 3 scenario, 1 trade-off, 1 troubleshooting
Topics: AWS Migration Hub, AWS Migration Evaluator, AWS Pricing Calculator, AWS Cost Explorer, Elastic Load Balancing, AWS Certificate Manager
🔗 Related practice sets
• 5 Questions to Test Your Design for New Solutions Knowledge (SAP-C02)
• SAP-C02 Study Notes in Questions: Migration and Modernization
• All SAP-C02 practice sets
• Every exam on this blog
📚 Beyond this set
More SAP-C02 questions: https://hyunhp.github.io/cert-bank/#exam=SAP-C02
Study guide: https://hyunhp.github.io/cert-bank/study.html#exam=SAP-C02
These are original practice questions, not real exam questions, and cert-bank is not affiliated with any certification vendor.
Original practice questions written for this blog, not exam dumps.
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