News

AWS Now Migrating NoSQL Databases

• By David Ramel
• 04/11/2017

Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) is now helping users migrate NoSQL databases to its cloud, adding functionality to its tool previously used only for relational databases and data warehouses.

Although in existence for decades, NoSQL databases came to prominence with the rise of Big Data analytics, featuring horizontal scaling, speedier processing and other capabilities that provided an attractive alternative to RDBMS offerings in many use cases.

While they have surged in popularity, the AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) didn't accommodate moving NoSQL databases to the AWS cloud until now. To introduce the new functionality, AWS started with one of the more popular NoSQL databases -- MongoDB -- as a migration source, and added its own NoSQL service, DynamoDB, as a migration target.

"MongoDB databases are now supported as a migration source, and Amazon DynamoDB databases are supported as a migration target," the company said in a blog post yesterday.

"This means you can stream data from MongoDB, as well as any supported AWS DMS source including Amazon Aurora, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle Database, SAP ASE and Microsoft SQL Server, to Amazon DynamoDB. Once your data is in Amazon DynamoDB, you can leverage the power of this NoSQL database for applications that need consistent, single-digit millisecond latency at any scale."

Even though the MongoDB migration functionality is new, AWS has provided access to MongoDB through its Quick Start program and as a regular service available from many vendors in the AWS Marketplace.

For data developers, AWS provided guidance on "Using MongoDB as a Source for AWS Database Migration Service" and "Using an Amazon DynamoDB Database as a Target for AWS Database Migration Service."

After the DMS tool was unveiled in March of last year, AWS has been expanding its capabilities and announced a sharp spike in migrations early this year.

AWS says the DMS tool lets enterprises move databases to its cloud with no downtime, and claims that it helped move more than 20,000 databases to its platform so far.