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Modernize your Oracle workloads to PostgreSQL with Database Migration Service, now in preview

April 6, 2022
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Shachar Guz

Lead Product Manager, Database Migration Service

Many organizations have been struggling with the complexity of their legacy databases. Unfortunately, they often find themselves locked into expensive licenses and restrictive contracts, which can limit their ability to modernize and introduce new functionality. Migrating to open-source databases, especially in the cloud, can solve many of these issues and help build modern, scalable, cost-effective applications.

However, database migrations are often highly complex and may require you to convert your schema and code to the new database engine, migrate your data, and switch over your applications, all while guaranteeing minimal downtime and disruption to the business.

Last year, we announced the general availability of Database Migration Service in our mission to help migrate your databases to the cloud with a simple and secure migration path. We launched support for homogeneous migrations, where the source and target databases use the same database engine (PostgreSQL, MySQL, or SQL Server). We saw adoption by customers migrating their workloads to Cloud SQL, Google Cloud’s fully managed relational database for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQL Server. More than 85% of the migrations using Database Migration Service are created and started underway in less than an hour.

Announcing Oracle to PostgreSQL support

Our customers shared that they’d like a similarly simple, easy-to-use experience for Oracle to PostgreSQL migrations. Today, we’re excited to announce the preview of Database Migration Service support for Oracle to PostgreSQL schema and data migrations.

Database Migration Service can integrate with the Ora2Pg open-source tool for schema conversion so you can migrate the schema and data of your Oracle workload from on-premises or other clouds to Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL. Ora2pg allows us to map the source to the target, and then our serverless change data capture-based mechanism can move your data securely and with minimal downtime. Database Migration Service can make database migrations fast, cost-effective, and reliable, and you can now use it to modernize from legacy databases to fully managed cloud databases.

Database Migration Service has you covered

Adopting a new database technology might appear to be a challenging task at first, but we can make the migration journey easier. We understand that effective and successful modernization can require a well-rounded approach: not only differentiated tooling but also integrated support and expert services you can trust.

Database Migration Service is highly reliable and serverless, meaning you don’t need to assign resources to the migration job or predict how many resources it will need. It can move your data from Oracle databases to Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL at scale and with low latency, which can mean minimal downtime at switchover and minimal disruption to your applications and customers.

Our integration with the proven Ora2Pg tool for schema migration means you can convert your Oracle schema to PostgreSQL with this popular open-source tool. You simply feed the configuration file after configuring, converting, and applying your converted schema with Ora2pg. Database Migration Service then creates the mapping and moves the data between the source and the target. Stay tuned for enhanced, built-in schema and code conversion capabilities in DMS to create an upgraded schema, code, and data migration experience.

“At MLB, we’re on a multi-year journey to modernize our applications with PostgreSQL as the database foundation,” says Shawn O’Rourke, manager of technology at MLB. “A key step in this journey is to reliably migrate our Oracle databases to Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL securely and without any disruption to our services. We’re excited to incorporate Database Migration Service, with its simple, serverless design, into our Oracle migration toolset.”

Expert services to help accelerate your migration

By working closely with experts from Google Professional Services and experienced migration partners, we help make sure you have access to the expertise and experience you need to facilitate successful migrations across your database fleet. From guidance on migration planning to turnkey end-to-end migrations, the combination of Database Migration Service and partner services can ensure a smooth transition to the cloud.

“We see tremendous demand from our customers for migrating away from proprietary databases onto cloud database technologies”, says David Yahalom, Managing Principal, Cloud Data Solutions at EPAM Systems. “One of the key success factors in application modernization is real-time continuous data replication within a heterogeneous database environment. Real-time data replication enables near-zero and zero downtime production switchovers while maintaining data integrity. We are very excited about the addition of Oracle to PostgreSQL migration support in Database Migration Service and believe it will be of great value to our customers. It will enable us to streamline database cloud migration initiatives to Google Cloud.”

Getting started with Database Migration Service

You can start migrating your Oracle workloads today using Database Migration Service:

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

  2. Use the Conversion Workspace creation wizard to upload your Ora2PG configuration file.

  3. Create your source and destination connection profiles. You can use this profile again later for additional migrations.

  4. Create a migration job to connect the Cloud SQL destination Connection Profile, Oracle Connection Profile, and Conversion Workspace.

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

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Once the initial snapshot of data has been migrated to the new destination, Database Migration Service will keep up and replicate new changes as they happen. You can then finalize 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:

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Learn more and start your database journey 

Database Migration Service schema and data migration from Oracle to Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL are available in preview in addition to the previously-announced SQL Server migration preview. If you’re interested in seeing it in action, you can request access now.

For more information to help get you started on your migration journey, head over to the documentation or start training with this Database Migration Service Qwiklab.

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