Migrating Databases to Amazon S3 with AWS DMS

Before going into the intricacies of migrating databases to Amazon S3 with AWS DMS, it is important first to understand the various components of AWS DMS CDC S3 and how they work in unison.  

Amazon Web Service Database Migration Service (AWS DMS)

AWS DMS, a cloud-based database migration service facilitates the easy migration of databases between data warehouses, relational databases, NoSQL databases, and others. It also seamlessly migrates databases from on-premises systems to the cloud and between one cloud provider to another. The benefits of migrating to the cloud include optimized advanced features like cost efficiency, security, flexibility, and speed to market.

Change Data Capture (CDC)  

The next component in AWS DMS CDC S3 is Change Data Capture (CDC). Change Data Capture is the activity that records modifications made in the latest production data or metadata. These changes are then stored in a separate data repository replication software. For capturing current changes at the source while migrating data to the target, an AWS DMS CDC task can be created that can replicate ongoing changes from a source data store.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is a fully-managed service from Amazon. It is ideal for users who work with limited storage operations but need the option to quickly scale up to tens of terabytes of data if required. 

S3 provides various levels of storage options ranging from low-cost ones to those that can handle massive volumes of data. S3 offers great data durability and scalability and a sudden spike in demand for storage can be met without investing in additional hardware or software. Other cutting-edge features of Amazon S3 include data protection, access management, data replication, and cost affordability. The replication activity carried out with AWS DMS CDC to S3 is possible both within and outside the region. S3 can also go through billions of objects of Batch Operations.

Click here for more information on AWS DMS CDC S3.

Databases can also be migrated using AWS DMS CDC to S3 from any supported database sources. Both full load or Change data capture CDC data can be written in a comma-separated format by default when S3 is the target in an AWS DMS activity.

However, before migrating data with AWS DMS CDC to S3, certain preconditions must be met by the users.

The AWS account used for the migration should have an IAM role that includes write and delete access to the S3 bucket that is the target database. This S3 bucket must be in the same AWS region as the DMS replication instance being used to migrate the data. The role should have tagging access. This will enable objects that have to be written to the target bucket to be tagged through AWS DMS CDC to S3. Finally, users must ensure that DMS (dms.amazonaws.com) is present in the IAM role as an additional entity.