A thorough look at AWS DMS

The AWS Database Migration Service helps you move your data to AWS and other cloud providers. Here is a review of the service.

Streamlining business operations and data management is becoming even more essential, especially as more customers demand speed from their vendors. Thus, businesses are increasingly looking for better ways to manage business data at the lowest price possible to maximize profits. AWS Database Migration Service, or AWS DMS, is one such tool that can help businesses with database migration and cloud data management.

SEE: Data migration testing checklist: Through pre- and post-migration (TechRepublic Premium)

Like any forward-thinking organization, Amazon has expanded its cloud offerings and found great success with AWS products and services. AWS DMS is one of many solutions the company offers to assist with cloud data migration and management. In this review, learn more about AWS DMS’s features, how it works and possible alternatives.

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What is AWS Database Migration Service?

AWS DMS is a cloud-based service that lets you easily move all of your data stores. The movement doesn’t have to be to Amazon’s cloud, either; it’s useful for users with other on-site and digital setups as well.

In addition, DMS offers a schema conversion and fleet advisor to make this process more accessible. You can use the DMS Fleet Advisor to manage your servers and physical databases. After collecting the information, it will create an inventory of everything before you officially move to the AWS cloud. The DMS Schema Conversion Tool takes these analytics and changes them to a new target engine.

How does AWS DMS work?

AWS DMS runs replication software while you tell it where to pull data from and where to upload it. You’ll then be able to schedule a task on the server, so it continues migrating your information. If you don’t have the necessary primary keys or tables, AWS DMS will create them for you, making the process much smoother. However, you can complete this step yourself, if you prefer.

AWS DMS pros and cons

AWS DMS pros

Because of the Fleet Advisor and Schema Conversion Tool, you can have your migration up and running minutes after downloading the service. It also lets you pay for resources as you use them. This ability is especially crucial as some countries head toward recession and industries rework their financial plans to deal with economic uncertainty.

SEE: Best practices to follow for data migration (TechRepublic)

AWS DMS offers three types of migration: full load only, change data capture (CDC) only, and full load and CDC. Full load only and CDC only will migrate the information in your database or the changes to it, respectively. CDC and full load will perform both processes and monitor the database as it works. Having the flexibility to choose among these migration plans is especially important for companies with large data stores that don’t want to pause workloads.

The most significant benefit of AWS DMS is that it is serverless and can handle all of the services you need to move your information automatically. It’s incredibly scalable, too, so you can adjust the process as you go. Another great feature is its backup replication server, which will quickly start working if the main one crashes. The backup should begin operating without interrupting the migration.

AWS DMS cons

Naturally, the migration process will sometimes slow down if you’re moving a lot of data. However, some AWS DMS users have reported missing information following data replication. If this happens to you, it will require manual intervention to resolve, which could lengthen the migration timeframe.

DMS users may also experience some lag issues with high throughput data. AWS DMS can load eight parallel tables to speed up performance with extensive replication servers. However, if there’s a lot of throughput information, the copying could slow down. It may require coding, which someone on your internal team will have to know how to do.

AWS DMS pricing

AWS DMS is a pay-as-you-go solution. It has hourly charge rates depending on the amount of data you’re moving. For instance, it could cost as low as $0.018 per hour if you move t3.micro instance types. However, the price jumps significantly to $14.43456 per hour when moving r6i.32xlarge. You’ll also pay either $0.115 or $0.23 per gigabyte of additional log storage a month, but the service offers 100GB to start.

Beyond the pay-as-you-go pricing information above, you may need to pay for T3 CPU credits, which run at $0.075 per vCPU-hour.

If you would like a thorough estimate of your spending, Amazon offers an AWS Pricing Calculator, or you can speak with a representative for a personalized quote.

AWS DMS alternatives

As with any healthy marketplace, there are many alternatives to AWS DMS you can consider. These are some of the most highly rated among users:

• Acronis Cyber Backup
• Supermetrics
• Veeam Backup & Replication
• Fivetran

Is AWS DMS right for you?

You and your data team know what’s best for your company. If you’re thinking about using AWS DMS for an upcoming data migration project, talk with your internal team of data experts and see what they think. It may be worthwhile to experiment with the tool using the AWS Free Tier before you make a commitment.

Read next: Top cloud and application migration tools (TechRepublic)