If you are concerned about database performance, optimizing cost for your database, answer to all will be migrating and modernizing your databases on cloud. In this blog, we are going to focus on DB migration options using AWS native tools
Database migration to cloud can be of two kinds – Heterogeneous and homogenous
In heterogeneous migration, a schema conversion tool is applied and in homogeneous migration, a database migration service is used.
AWS Database Migration Service
AWS Native DMS helps migrate databases to AWS quickly and securely. In this case ,
Source database remains operational during the migration Downtime is minimized and impacts least to applications that rely on the database Can be used to migrate your data to & from the most commonly used DBs - commercial and open-source databases.
AWS Database Migration Service supports both cases mentioned that are :-
Homogeneous migrations such as Oracle-to-Oracle Heterogeneous migrations between different database platforms, Example - Oracle or MS SQL Servers to Amazon Aurora
Key Benefits that this tool brings are
Simple to use with Minimal downtime Low cost and supports wide varies of database Continuous replication & Reliability Let us discuss few Use cases
Homogeneous Database Migrations
As the name suggest in homogeneous database migrations, the source and target database engines are the same or are compatible, this means database codes , type and schema structures are compatible and this process becomes easy one-step process . AWS DMS service takes care of the rest. We can name few examples like
Oracle to Amazon RDS for Oracle MySQL to Amazon Aurora MySQL to Amazon RDS for MySQL Microsoft SQL Server to Amazon RDS for SQL Server
Multiple database can be located in your own premises or other sources with a target of a database in Amazon EC2 or Amazon RDS.
Heterogeneous Database Migrations
In such cases database migrations, process is not straightforward, and, requires schema and code transformation before data migration can start. This is because database engines are different and this makes it a two-step process as compared to a single step in homogenous DB migration.
Step 1 - Use the AWS Schema Conversion Tool to change & convert the source schema and code to match that of the target database
Step 2 – Use AWS DMS to migrate data from the source database to the target identified. All required data types will be automatically converted during the migration
Source database can come from multiple location and targets can be identified as Amazon EC2 or Amazon RDS
Examples of Heterogeneous database migrations are
Oracle to Amazon Aurora Oracle to PostgreSQL Microsoft SQL Server to MySQL
Few more use cases for AWS Database Migration Service are for
1. Continuous Replication & DR
Multiple use-case of continuous data replication using Database Migration Services can be
DR synchronization Geo DB replication /distribution Dev/Test synchronization
Database Migration Service from AWS supports both homogenous and heterogeneous data replication for all supported database engines.
2. Development and Test of production systems
AWS Database Migration Service can be effectively used to test real production like uses-cases and then copy updates back to on-prem production systems
3. Database Consolidation
One of the powerful use-case for DMS services is to consolidate multiple source databases into a single target database and yes this works both for heterogeneous and homogenous type of migrations .Sources of such databases can come from different locations and Database Migration Service can be used to consolidate it into AWS EC2 or AWS RDS
Conclusion
Coforge is helping several customers migrate and modernize database via AWS native services to enable and accelerate cloud adoption
