AWS Migration Evaluator
A service that collects and analyzes on-premises inventory and resource utilization to 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 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 uses read-only access to environments such as VMware, Hyper-V, Windows, Linux, and SQL Server, continuously collecting CPU utilization, memory consumption, disk I/O, and network traffic from each server without agents. The FAQ states that collected data is encrypted and sent over HTTPS to an encrypted Amazon S3 bucket provided by Migration Evaluator. 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. The features page states that if gaps in hardware provisioning or utilization are found during import, industry benchmarks are applied automatically.
Reading and Leveraging Business Case Reports
Migration Evaluator assessment results include Quick Insights and a business case. Quick Insights consists of a one-page summary for business stakeholders and detailed per-server data for technical audiences. According to the FAQ, Quick Insights shows the projected Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, and operating system license costs if they were purchased from AWS on a one-year, no-upfront basis. The features page states that the business case, which you can request when you need additional insights, includes sections such as workload-specific purchasing scenarios and Windows and Microsoft SQL Server licensing options (BYOL and License Included). In practice, one approach is to use this report to select the first servers to migrate, starting with workloads that have large cost reduction potential. The getting started page states that results are delivered as a Quick Insights report, a business case, and a detailed export.
Migration Hub Integration and Position in the Overall Migration Project
Migration Evaluator handles the Assess phase in the AWS migration framework, providing input to the subsequent Mobilize and Migrate phases. According to the FAQ, Migration Evaluator itself does not perform application dependency mapping, which is done in Migration Hub. By optionally collecting active TCP connections with the collector, you can use Migration Hub to visualize server-to-server dependencies and create application groups, and application groups created in Migration Hub are included in the Migration Evaluator analysis. AWS states that Migration Hub stopped accepting new customers as of November 7, 2025, and continues to operate for existing customers to complete their ongoing migration projects. 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.
References (Official AWS Resources)
The primary sources for this page are the official AWS website and documentation. Check the official pages below for the latest specifications and pricing.
- AWS Migration Hub official page
- AWS MGN official page
- AWS Database Migration Service official page
- AWS Documentation (official)
If this page and the official documentation disagree, treat the official documentation as authoritative.