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AWS Migration Hub

A dashboard service that centrally tracks and visualizes progress across multiple migration tools, also offering Strategy Recommendations for migration strategy evaluation and Refactor Spaces for refactoring support

About 5 min readWritten and edited by Awashiro

Overview

AWS Migration Hub is a service for centrally planning and tracking workload migrations from on-premises to AWS. It visualizes progress from AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), AWS Application Migration Service (MGN), and third-party migration tools on a single dashboard, providing a complete picture of server migration projects at scale. The Strategy Recommendations feature evaluates suitable migration strategies (rehost, replatform, refactor) per workload, while Refactor Spaces supports incremental refactoring to microservices. Note that AWS has closed Migration Hub to new customers (as of September 2026; existing customers can continue using it to complete ongoing migrations) and points to AWS Transform as the alternative.

Why Migration Projects Become Chaotic and the Value of Centralized Tracking

In large-scale migration projects, tracking which workload is at which stage becomes inherently difficult when migrating dozens to hundreds of servers and databases in parallel. Different workload types call for different tools - MGN for lift-and-shift and DMS for database migration. Since each tool displays progress in its own console, project managers had to piece together the overall picture by switching between multiple screens. Migration Hub solves this problem by aggregating progress from all migration tools into a single dashboard. It displays each application's migration status (Not Started, In Progress, Complete, Failed) in real time, and allows grouping dependent servers by application for management. AWS offers the Migration Hub dashboard itself at no additional charge (as of September 2026), while charges for the migration tools you use apply separately (see the official pricing page for details). Azure also offers Azure Migrate as an equivalent service for assessing on-premises environments and running migrations, while Migration Hub integrates with AWS migration tools such as DMS and MGN so that progress for AWS-targeted migrations can be tracked in one place.

Quantitatively Evaluating Migration Strategies with Strategy Recommendations

The most important and difficult decision in the early stages of a migration project is choosing whether to rehost (migrate as-is), replatform (migrate with partial optimization), or refactor (redesign as cloud-native) for each workload. Strategy Recommendations analyzes information collected by a data collector installed on-premises - server specs, OS versions, running processes, and network dependencies - and presents recommended strategies for each workload. For example, for a Windows application running on .NET Framework 4.x, it presents both EC2 rehosting and Elastic Beanstalk replatforming as candidates, allowing comparison of compatibility risks and estimated costs. For databases, it evaluates whether migration to RDS is appropriate or whether Aurora migration could yield performance improvements. Based on these quantitative evaluation results, you can plan migration prioritization and resource allocation, avoiding the easy but suboptimal decision of rehosting everything and instead selecting a suitable strategy per workload.

Incremental Modernization with Refactor Spaces and DMS/MGN Integration

Refactor Spaces provides an environment for incrementally refactoring monolithic applications into microservices. It automatically builds infrastructure implementing the Strangler Fig pattern, allowing the existing monolith and new microservices to coexist while gradually shifting traffic to the new services. Internally, it auto-generates a routing layer combining API Gateway and Network Load Balancer, controlling request routing by URL path. For example, you can route /api/orders to a new Lambda-based microservice while routing everything else to the existing monolith - all without code changes. DMS handles database migration and replication, maintaining continuous data synchronization from on-premises Oracle or SQL Server to Aurora or DynamoDB. MGN handles server rehosting, minimizing downtime with agent-based block-level replication. Progress from all these tools is aggregated on the Migration Hub dashboard, enabling you to drive the project while maintaining cross-cutting visibility into microservices being refactored, databases being migrated, and servers being rehosted.

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.

If this page and the official documentation disagree, treat the official documentation as authoritative.

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Related Terms

Amazon RDSAmazon AuroraAWS LambdaAmazon EC2AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Related Services

AWS MGNAWS Database Migration ServiceAmazon AuroraAWS Lambda

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