Migrate your MySQL and PostgreSQL databases using Database Migration Service, now GA

We’re excited to announce that Google Cloud’s Database Migration Service (DMS) is generally available, supporting MySQL and PostgreSQL migrations from on-premises and other clouds to Cloud SQL. Later this year we will introduce support for Microsoft SQL Server. You can get started with DMS today at no additional charge.

Enterprises are modernizing their business infrastructure with managed cloud services. They want to leverage the reliability, security, and cost-effectiveness of fully managed cloud databases like Cloud SQL. In November, we launched the new, serverless DMS as part of our vision for meeting these modern needs in an easy, fast, predictable, and reliable way.

We’ve seen accelerated adoption of DMS, including customers such as Accenture, Comoto, DoiT, Freedom Financial Network, Ryde and Samsung, who are migrating their MySQL and PostgreSQL production workloads to Cloud SQL. DMS provides these customers the power to migrate quickly and with minimal disruption to their services. 

Freedom Financial Network quickly migrated their large MySQL databases to Cloud SQL. Christopher Testroet, their principal engineer, said “Initially, when planning the migration, we figured that a planned downtime of 2–3 hours might have been workable—not ideal, but workable. But once we were up to speed with our competence on DMS, the actual downtime for each application from the database side was a maximum of ten minutes. This was a great improvement for every team in our organization.”

We worked closely during the DMS preview period with DoiT, a company that specializes in helping their customers with cloud migrations. “We see many customers that either want to migrate their business from on-premises to the cloud or are already in the cloud and want to migrate to a different provider,” says Mike Royle, Staff Cloud Architect at DoiT International. “One of the key pain points that prevents customers from completing these migrations is downtime. PostgreSQL customers typically have very large databases, meaning they are facing hours of downtime, which for most customers is just not realistic. With DMS, we can support our customers in migrating their databases with close to zero downtime."

Migrating your databases to Cloud SQL is a critical step in the journey to the cloud, and DMS provides a simple, serverless, and reliable path forward. “We are using Compute Engine for our servers, Google Vision for text recognition, Google Maps for validating addresses and calculating routes for our transfer services,” says Nicolas Candela Alvarez, IT Director at The Excellence Collection. “With DMS we moved our database to Cloud SQL and transitioned to a fully managed database that keeps up with our rapid business growth.”

Getting to know DMS
Customers are choosing DMS to migrate their MySQL and PostgreSQL databases because of its differentiated approach:

Simple experience
Lifting and shifting your database shouldn’t be complicated: database preparation documentation, secure connectivity setup, and migration validation should be built right into the flow. DMS delivered on this experience with MySQL migrations, and has expanded it to include PostgreSQL. “What makes this tool powerful is that it's an easy gateway to Cloud SQL,” says Valeed Malik, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at SaRA Health. “Not having a vast replication background was not a barrier since the documentation both inside and outside the product was rich, which you may not expect on other platforms.”  

Minimal downtime
Migrating your database shouldn’t interfere with running your business. DMS migrations allow you to continuously replicate database changes from your source to Cloud SQL to allow for fast cutover and minimal database downtime. “We were tired of babysitting our PostgreSQL instances, maintaining patches, rotating backups, monitoring replication, etc. However, we needed to move to Cloud SQL with minimal downtime,” says Caleb Shay, Database Engineer at Comoto. “DMS allowed us to perform this migration quickly and without any disruption to our business.”

Reliable and complete
DMS’s unique migration method, which utilizes both MySQL and PostgreSQL’s native replication capabilities, maximizes security, fidelity and reliability. These like-to-like migrations to Cloud SQL are high-fidelity, and the destination database is ready to go after cutover, without the hassle of extra steps, and at no additional charge.

Serverless and secure 
With DMS’ serverless architecture, you don’t need to worry about provisioning or managing migration-specific resources. Migrations are high performance, minimizing downtime no matter the scale. DMS also keeps your migrated data secure, supporting multiple methods of private connectivity between source and destination databases.

“Establishing connectivity is often viewed as hard. The in-product guidance DMS introduced allowed us to easily create a secure tunnel between the source and the new Cloud SQL instance and ensure our data is safe and secured,” says Andre Susanto, Database Engineer at Family Zone. 

Getting started with Database Migration Service

You can start migrating your PostgreSQL and MySQL workloads today using DMS:

1. Navigate to the Database Migration area of your Google Cloud console, under Databases, and click Create Migration Job.

2. Choose the database type you want to migrate, and see what actions you need to take to set up your source for successful migration.

3. Create your source connection profile, which can later be used for additional migrations.

4. Create a Cloud SQL destination that fits your business needs.

5. Define how you want to connect your source and destination, with both private and public connectivity methods supported.

6. Test your migration job and make sure the test was successful as displayed below, and start it whenever you're ready. See below image

Once historical data has been migrated to the new destination, DMS will keep up and replicate new changes as they happen. You can then promote the migration job, and your new Cloud SQL instance will be ready to go. You can monitor your migration jobs on the migration jobs list as shown in the image below: 

Learn more and start your database journey 

DMS is now generally available for MySQL and PostgreSQL migrations from all types of sources, both on-premises and in the cloud. Looking for SQL Server migrations? You can request access to participate in the SQL Server preview. 

For more information to help get you started on your migration journey, read our blog on migration best practices, head on over to the DMS documentation or start training with this DMS Qwiklab.

^{Customer stories provided through a TechValidate survey conducted February 2021.}