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AWS Database Migration Service Now Available
After a five-month testing period, Amazon Web Service's new Database Migration Service (DMS) is now ready for prime time.
First announced as a beta product at last October's AWS re:Invent conference, DMS became generally available on Tuesday for AWS datacenters in Northern Virginia, Oregon, Northern California, Ireland, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapore and Sydney. The company plans to extend its availability to other regions "in the coming months," according to AWS evangelist Jeff Barr in a blog post.
Since the start of this year, pilot customers have used DMS to move over 1,000 databases into the AWS cloud, the company said.
AWS is touting the service as a means for organizations to move their databases into the AWS cloud with minimal downtime and at low cost (pricing can be as low as $3 to move a terabyte-sized database, for example). It supports the following databases: Amazon Aurora, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, MariaDB and PostgreSQL.
It's also easy to use; a homogeneous database migration is a one-step process in the AWS Management Console, and a heterogeneous migration a two-step process, according to AWS.
Heterogeneous database migrations -- for instance, SQL Server to MySQL, Oracle to PostgreSQL, or Oracle to Amazon Aurora -- are enabled through the AWS Schema Conversion Tool, which "convert[s] the source database schema and a majority of the custom code, including views, stored procedures, and functions, to a format compatible with the target database," according to AWS. The Schema Conversion Tool is available for Windows, Mac, Ubuntu Linux and Fedora Linux.
DMS can also be used for continuous data replication, as well as for migrating multiple databases from a variety of sources to a single target database.
"The AWS Database Migration Service works by setting up and then managing a replication instance on AWS. This instance unloads data from the source database and loads it into the destination database, and can be used for a one-time migration followed by on-going replication to support a migration that entails minimal downtime," wrote Barr. "Along the way DMS handles many of the complex details associated with migration, including data type transformation and conversion from one database platform to another (Oracle to Aurora, for example). The service also monitors the replication and the health of the instance, notifies you if something goes wrong, and automatically provisions a replacement instance if necessary."
He added, "The service supports many different migration scenarios and networking options. One of the endpoints must always be in AWS; the other can be on-premises, running on an EC2 instance, or running on an RDS database instance. The source and destination can reside within the same Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) or in two separate VPCs (if you are migrating from one cloud database to another). You can connect to an on-premises database via the public Internet or via AWS Direct Connect."