AWS Database Migration Service: Seamless Migration

AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) is a cloud service that makes it possible to migrate relational databases, data warehouses, NoSQL databases, and other types of data stores. You can use AWS DMS to migrate your data into the AWS Cloud or between combinations of cloud and on-premises setups. In this blog post, we will explain what you can do and how AWS Database Migration Service helps in seamless migration.

Overview of AWS Database Migration Service

AWS DMS is a managed and automated migration service that provides a quick and secure way to migrate databases from on-premise databases, DB instances, or databases running on EC2 instances to the cloud. It helps you modernize, migrate, and manage your environments in the AWS cloud. AWS DMS supports migration between 20-plus database and analytics engines, such as Oracle to Amazon Aurora MySQL-Compatible Edition , MySQL to Amazon Relational Database (RDS) for MySQL , Microsoft SQL Server to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition, MongoDB to Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) , Oracle to Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).

AWS DMS also supports homogeneous and heterogeneous database migrations, meaning you can migrate to the same or a different database engine. For example, you can migrate from Oracle to Oracle, or from Oracle to PostgreSQL. AWS DMS takes care of many of the difficult or tedious tasks involved in a migration project, such as capacity analysis, hardware and software provisioning, installation and administration, testing and debugging, and ongoing data replication and monitoring.

At a basic level, AWS DMS is a server in the AWS Cloud that runs replication software. You create a source and target connection to tell AWS DMS where to extract from and load to. Then you schedule a task that runs on this server to move your data. AWS DMS creates the tables and associated primary keys if they don’t exist on the target. You can create the target tables yourself if you prefer. Or you can use AWS Schema Conversion Tool (AWS SCT) to create some or all of the target tables, indexes, views, triggers, and so on.

What You Can Do with AWS DMS

With AWS DMS, you can perform various migration scenarios, such as:

• Move to managed databases: Migrate from legacy or on-premises databases to managed cloud services through a simplified migration process, removing undifferentiated database management tasks.
• Remove licensing costs and accelerate business growth: Modernize to purpose-built databases to innovate and build faster for any use case at scale for one-tenth the cost.
• Replicate ongoing changes: Create redundancies of business-critical databases and data stores to minimize downtime and protect against any data loss.
• Improve integration with data lakes: Build data lakes and perform real-time processing on change data from your data stores.

Benefits of using AWS DMS

• Trusted by customers globally: AWS DMS has been used by thousands of customers across various industries to securely migrate over 1 million databases with minimal downtime.
• Supports multiple sources and targets: AWS DMS supports migration from 20-plus database and analytics engines, including both commercial and open-source options.
• Maintains high availability and minimal downtime: AWS DMS supports Multi-AZ deployments and ongoing data replication and monitoring to ensure high availability and minimal downtime during the migration process.
• Low cost and pay-as-you-go pricing: AWS DMS charges only for the compute resources and additional log storage used during the migration process.
• Easy to use and scalable: AWS DMS provides a simple web-based console and API to create and manage your migration tasks. You can also scale up or down your replication instances as needed.

How AWS DMS Helps in Seamless Migration

AWS DMS helps you migrate your data seamlessly by providing the following features:

• Discovery: You can use DMS Fleet Advisor to discover your source data infrastructure, such as servers, databases, and schemas that you can migrate to the AWS Cloud.
• Schema conversion: You can use AWS SCT or download it to your local PC to automatically assess and convert your source schemas to a new target engine. You can also use AWS SCT to generate reports on compatibility issues and recommendations for optimization.
• Data migration: You can use AWS DMS to migrate your data from your source to your target with minimal disruption. You can perform one-time migrations or replicate ongoing changes to keep sources and targets in sync.
• Validation: You can use AWS SCT or download it to your local PC to validate the data integrity and performance of your migrated data. You can also use AWS SCT to compare the source and target schemas and data.
• Conclusion

AWS DMS is a powerful and flexible service that enables you to migrate your databases and data stores to the AWS Cloud or between different cloud and on-premises setups. It supports a wide range of database and analytics engines, both homogeneous and heterogeneous. It also provides features such as discovery, schema conversion, data migration, validation, and replication to help you migrate your data seamlessly and securely.