While migrating an on-premises server to AWS using the AWS Application Migration Service, what steps need to be taken on the on-premises server before launching the cutover instance?

Hello Naziya,

It is enough to shut down the services on your onpremise-server. You do this step so that no new information/data is written to your source-server, because if you don't do that, you will have a drift in data when you launch your test/cutover-instance.

Important:

Your onpremise/source-server has to run when you trigger a launch of a testinstance/cutover instance, otherwise it will fail to launch that step. Tho, after launch you could theoretically shut it down.

If you launched your cutover instance successfully and all the tests were positiv, you can start to think about "archiving" your source-server. That step will trigger the deinstallation of the application migration service (mgn) on your on-premise server and mark the server as archived in mgn.

Pro-Tip:

Enable SSM-Agent Installation & Setup in the post-launch-template so that you can easily and securely connect to your ec2 after migration. For servers wich are already registered in the mgn-service, you have to update the templates for each server. For future-servers, you can update the Default-Templates wich you find in the navigation pane (but wich are not active for listed servers in the mgn).

See also:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/mgn/latest/ug/migration-workflow-gs.html

Sincerely

Heiko