Building blocks
Design goal
Produce an evidence-based migration assessment whose sizing, licensing, cost, and migration recommendations can be traced back to validated source data.
Success criteria
- Collect or import source inventory
- Validate data quality and scope
- Compare target scenarios and rightsizing
- Generate business and technical migration outputs
Architecture
Use an AWS Transform workspace to ingest discovered or imported inventory, review scope and data quality, run assessment scenarios, and carry the result into migration planning.
Architecture flow
- Source estate / inventory
- AWS Transform discovery or import
- Inventory validation
- Migration assessment scenarios
- Rightsizing and cost analysis
- Migration planning inputs
Architecture decisions
Use AWS Transform for new assessments
WhyAWS positions Transform as the current migration discovery and assessment experience for new customers, including inventory ingestion, assessment scenarios, and downstream migration planning.
Trade-offThe current workflow reduces reliance on legacy tooling, but assessment quality still depends on source coverage, import quality, and the assumptions entered into the workspace.
Treat data quality as an architecture input
WhyRightsizing and migration recommendations are only as defensible as the inventory, utilization window, application grouping, and assumptions used to build the assessment.
Trade-offCollecting a longer and cleaner evidence window improves confidence, but extends assessment effort and may delay business-case decisions.
Security
Protect the control and data paths deliberately. Limit discovery credentials, control workspace access, and treat uploaded inventory, dependency, licensing, and cost data as sensitive infrastructure information.
Cost drivers
- Target EC2 and EBS assumptions
- Database target selection
- Operating schedule and utilization
- Licensing assumptions
- Network and storage design after migration
Design assumptions
- A representative inventory can be discovered or imported
- Assessment assumptions are reviewed with workload owners before decisions are finalized
Implementation plan
- Create the assessment workspace and define the estate scope, owners, and data-quality criteria before importing inventory.
- Collect or import inventory and performance data, then reconcile totals, duplicates, exclusions, and unsupported records with the source estate.
- Group servers into applications where dependency or ownership information is available instead of assessing isolated machines only.
- Configure alternative rightsizing, licensing, utilization, and target scenarios so the recommendation is not based on a single assumption set.
- Review cost and sizing outliers with workload owners, then carry approved findings into the migration business case and wave plan.
Validate the design
- Reconcile assessed inventory totals with source-system records and explain exclusions or duplicates.
- Review low-confidence, missing, and stale performance records before accepting rightsizing results.
- Confirm application groupings and dependency assumptions with workload owners.
- Challenge the largest cost/sizing outliers and document why the selected scenario is acceptable.