Migration Evaluator
Free pre-migration assessment that turns your on-premises inventory into a projected AWS bill and a business case.
Verified against AWS documentation · 2026-09-09
Key facts
- 01Free, assessment-only (formerly TSO Logic) — it prices and justifies a migration, it never moves a server
- 02Two ways in: agentless collector (one Windows VM, read-only over WMI/SNMP/vSphere/T-SQL) or upload inventory you already have
- 03Quick Insights = fast projected EC2, EBS and OS licence costs; Business Case = deeper report built with an AWS Migrations SA
- 04Prices from measured utilisation, not provisioned specs — so it right-sizes instead of copying oversized on-prem servers
Exam triggers
Phrases and scenarios that point here.
- "Build a business case", "justify the move to leadership", "TCO before we commit"
- "What would our on-prem servers cost on AWS?" — asked before anything has moved
- Windows/SQL Server-heavy estate and licensing is the cost question → models BYOL vs licence-included
- "Complimentary", "no cost", "free" attached to a migration assessment → Migration Evaluator
Not this service
- Costing an architecture you're designing but don't run yet → AWS Pricing Calculator
- Actually rehosting the servers → AWS Application Migration Service (MGN)
- Server dependency mapping and migration progress tracking → Application Discovery Service + Migration Hub
Use cases
- 01A CFO won't approve a data centre exit until someone shows what the same 400 VMs cost on AWS — this produces that number from measured usage instead of a spreadsheet guess
- 02Data centre lease renews in 18 months and the team needs a defensible cost comparison before signing or walking away
- 03A retailer whose estate is mostly Windows and SQL Server wants the licensing decision made on modelled numbers rather than vendor pressure
- 04Servers were sized for a peak that never came back — the report exposes the gap between provisioned and used, so the AWS estimate isn't a like-for-like copy of oversized hardware
- 05A company already runs third-party discovery tooling (or Application Discovery Service) — upload those exports instead of installing anything new
How it's charged
- 01Free — no charge for the collector, Quick Insights, the Business Case report, or the AWS solutions architect time
- 02Not a self-service console product: you request an assessment, so it never appears as a line item on your bill
- 03Every figure it produces is a projection of a future AWS bill, not a charge you're paying today
- 04Quick Insights costs are modelled on a one-year, no-upfront basis — the Business Case adds other purchasing scenarios
- 05The only real spend is yours: the on-prem VM running the collector
