A company is running a Microsoft SOL Server instance on premises and is migrating its application to AWS. The company lacks the resources needed to refactor the application but management wants to reduce operational overhead as part of the migration. Which database service would MOST effectively support these requirements?

The company needs to migrate a Microsoft SQL Server database to AWS while reducing operational overhead and avoiding application refactoring. Amazon RDS for SQL Server is a managed database service that automates time-consuming administration tasks such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups. This directly addresses the need to reduce operational overhead. Since it is a fully managed SQL Server environment, it allows the company to migrate its existing database with minimal to no changes, thus avoiding the need for refactoring. This makes it the most effective solution for the given requirements.

A. Amazon DynamoDB is a NoSQL database. Migrating from a relational database like SQL Server would require a significant application refactor, which the company wants to avoid.
B. Amazon Redshift is a data warehousing service, optimized for analytical queries, not for the transactional workloads of a typical application database.
C. Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon EC2 requires the company to manage the operating system and database software, which does not reduce operational overhead.

1. AWS. (n.d.). Amazon RDS for SQL Server. AWS Documentation. Retrieved from https://aws.amazon.com/rds/sql/

"Amazon RDS makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale SQL Server deployments in the cloud. With Amazon RDS, you can deploy multiple editions of SQL Server...in minutes with cost-efficient and resizable compute capacity."

2. AWS. (n.d.). What is Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)?. AWS Documentation.

"Amazon RDS is a managed service... It frees you to focus on your applications so you can give them the fast performance, high availability, security, and compatibility they need."