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Accelerating cloud migrations with the new Database Migration Service

November 12, 2020
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Andi Gutmans

GM & VP of Engineering, Databases

Enterprises across all industries are answering the call to move their business infrastructure, and with that their databases, to the cloud. They are flocking to fully managed cloud databases like Cloud SQL to leverage their unparalleled reliability, security, and cost-effectiveness. Today, we’re launching the new serverless Database Migration Service (DMS) as part of our vision at Google Cloud for how to meet those modern needs in a way that’s easier, faster, more predictable, and more reliable. 

We know that database migrations can be a challenge for enterprises. That’s why we give our customers a uniquely easy, secure, and reliable experience with DMS. We worked with dozens of customers around the world, including Samsung Electronics, Adwerx, Affle, Cirruseo (Accenture), Guichê Virtual, and Ryde, to successfully migrate their production databases with minimal downtime using DMS. So, what is it exactly that makes DMS different? 

Simple experience: “I have a hard time imagining a migration process being easier,” says Josh Bielick, VP of Infrastructure at Adwerx. Migrations shouldn’t be a headache to set up, nor require independent research or searching through documentation. Preparing databases for replication, configuring secure source connectivity, and validating migration setup is baked right into DMS, making the setup clear, fast, and repeatable.

Minimal downtime: Application uptime is key to keeping your business running. Every migration with DMS can replicate data continuously from source database to destination without cumbersome manual steps, minimizing database downtime and enabling fast application cutover. “At Ryde, our ride-sharing app users are always active. When we made the decision to move to Google Cloud, we needed a way to migrate our production databases from Amazon RDS to Cloud SQL. Database Migration Service made this simple, and we were able to complete the migration in less than a day, with minimal disruption to our users,” says Nitin Dolli, CTO, Ryde Technologies. “Now that we’re fully migrated to Cloud SQL, we no longer need to worry about scaling, maintenance, or other operations as we continue to grow. We can just focus on building robust applications.” 

Reliable and complete: Migrations need to be high-fidelity, so the destination database just works. For like-to-like migrations across compatible source and destination database engines, DMS is unique among migration services because it uses the database’s native replication capabilities to maximize fidelity and reliability. 

Serverless and secure: Migrations just work, at scale, in a serverless fashion. With DMS, there’s no hassle of provisioning or managing migration-specific resources, or monitoring them to make sure everything runs smoothly. For sensitive data, DMS also supports multiple secure private connectivity methods to protect your data during migration.

DMS provides a fast and seamless migration to Cloud SQL, the fully managed database service for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server. By migrating to Cloud SQL, you not only benefit from its enterprise-grade availability, security, and stability, but you also get unique integrations with the rest of Google Cloud, including Google Kubernetes Engine and BigQuery. “We needed to create live dashboards built on top of BigQuery that pulled data from both on-premises and cloud sources. Google Cloud’s Database Migration Service made this easy for us,” says Sofiane Kihal, Engineer, Cirruseo (Accenture). “Using its continuous replication, we were able to migrate data to Cloud SQL and then query directly using federation from BigQuery. Additionally, using Cloud SQL as a managed service for MySQL has allowed us to reduce the time we spend on operations by over 75%.”

How does Database Migration Service work?

DMS provides high-fidelity, minimal downtime migrations for MySQL and PostgreSQL workloads. We designed it to be truly cloud-native—built by and for the cloud. DMS utilizes log shipping to replicate data at super-low latencies from the source database to the destination. It streams the initial snapshot of data, then catches up and continuously replicates new data as it arrives in the source.

The source and destination are continuously up to date because they rely on the databases’ own native replication capabilities. This replication technique maximizes the fidelity of data transferred with very low latency. That means you can decide when you’re ready to promote your database, then just point your application to Cloud SQL as the primary database, with minimal downtime. 

DMS is serverless, so you never have to worry about provisioning, managing, or monitoring migration-specific resources. The source database’s data, schema, and additional database features (triggers, stored procedures, and more) are replicated to the Cloud SQL destination reliably, and at scale, with no user intervention required.

Getting started with Database Migration Service

You can start setting up a migration to Cloud SQL for MySQL with DMS today. Head over to the Database Migration area of your Google Cloud console, under Databases, and click Create Migration Job. There you can:

  1. Initiate migration creation, and see what actions you need to take to set up your source for successful migration.

  2. Define your source, whose connectivity information is saved as a connection profile you can re-use for other migrations. 

  3. Create your destination—a Cloud SQL instance, right-sized to fit your source data and optimize your costs.

  4. Define the connectivity method, with both private and public connectivity methods supported to suit your business needs.

  5. Test your migration job to ensure it will be successful when you’re ready to go.

Once your migration job runs and the source and destination are in sync, you’ll be ready to promote and use your new Cloud SQL instance!

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Learn more and start your database journey  

DMS, now in Preview, supports migrations of self-hosted MySQL databases, either on-premises or in the cloud, as well as managed databases from other clouds, to Cloud SQL for MySQL. Support for PostgreSQL is currently available for limited customers in Preview, with SQL Server coming soon (request access for both). You can get started with DMS for native like-to-like migrations to Cloud SQL at no additional charge. 

For more resources to help get you started on your migration journey, read our blog on migration best practices, or head on over to the DMS documentation.


Customer stories provided through a TechValidate survey conducted October 2020.

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