AWS Migration Evaluator
A service that collects and analyzes on-premises inventory and resource utilization to automatically generate AWS migration cost estimates and business cases
Overview
AWS Migration Evaluator (formerly TSO Logic) is a service that analyzes on-premises server environments and automatically creates AWS migration cost estimates and business cases. It deploys an agentless data collector on-premises to gather CPU, memory, storage, and network utilization data. Based on collected data, it generates EC2 instance type recommendations, license cost optimization proposals, and running cost comparison reports between on-premises and AWS. It provides numerical backing for TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) analysis needed for executive migration proposals, accelerating migration project decision-making. The service is available at no charge.
Data Collection Mechanism and Agentless Design
Migration Evaluator data collection is performed through a collector appliance deployed on-premises. The collector supports VMware vCenter, Hyper-V, and physical servers, continuously collecting CPU utilization, memory consumption, disk I/O, and network traffic from each server without agents. A minimum collection period of two weeks is recommended, including both peak and off-peak data for more accurate right-sizing recommendations. The collector sends data to AWS over HTTPS, requiring only a port 443 outbound rule addition to the firewall for deployment. If you already have inventory data in a CMDB (Configuration Management Database) or third-party monitoring tools, you can manually input data using the CSV import feature. While utilization data accuracy is lower in this case, you can quickly obtain a rough business case estimate.
Reading and Leveraging Business Case Reports
The business case report generated by Migration Evaluator has a two-layer structure: an executive summary for leadership and detailed analysis for technical teams. The executive summary compares current environment annual running costs (including hardware depreciation, power, cooling, facility costs, and personnel) with estimated post-migration AWS costs, presenting a 3-year TCO reduction figure. The detailed analysis includes recommended EC2 instance types for each server, discount rates with Savings Plans or Reserved Instances, and Windows Server or SQL Server license optimization comparisons (BYOL vs License Included). In practice, this report is used to select Phase 1 migration target servers, prioritizing workloads with the greatest cost reduction potential. Reports can be exported in PDF and spreadsheet formats, ready for direct use as internal approval documents.
Migration Hub Integration and Position in the Overall Migration Project
Migration Evaluator handles the Assess phase in the AWS migration framework, smoothly connecting to subsequent Mobilize and Migrate phases. Assessment results are automatically linked to Migration Hub, carrying over as the migration target server inventory. Migration Hub integrates with Application Discovery Service data to visualize server dependency mapping, facilitating migration group (wave) planning. A practical consideration is that Migration Evaluator recommendations are resource utilization-based right-sizing, and application performance requirements and license constraints must be considered separately. For example, Oracle Database licensing depends on vCPU count, so reducing instance size for cost optimization also changes license costs - a point that is often overlooked.