A company runs a legacy monolithic application on-premises and wants to modernize it on AWS by breaking it into microservices, adopting managed services, and using serverless where possible. Which migration strategy describes this approach?
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C
Refactoring re-architects the application to exploit cloud-native patterns, and breaking a monolith into microservices while adopting serverless and managed services is its defining signature. It is the highest-effort strategy but yields the greatest cloud benefit.
Rehost migrates the code as-is, Replatform adds modest optimizations while keeping the core architecture intact, and Retain deliberately leaves the workload where it is, on-premises.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Rehost moves the application unchanged to cloud servers; a monolith moved unchanged remains a monolith.
- B. Replatform makes a few targeted swaps, such as a managed database, without restructuring the application into microservices.
- D. Retaining keeps the application running where it already is, on-premises, and involves no modernization.
Exam tip. The 7 Rs are Rehost, Replatform, Refactor, Repurchase, Relocate, Retain, Retire. Refactor means the most effort and the most cloud-native payoff.