Organizations that have critical and massive workloads running on an on-premises Microsoft SQL Server often want to migrate their databases to the cloud to derive the benefits of the platform. This can be done easily with the Amazon Web Service Database Management Service (AWS DMS) while keeping the same database engines (applicable to homogeneous migration only).

The advantage of using AWS DMS for migration of database SQL Server to S3 is that there is no downtime. The source database remains functional during migration. It is very useful for migrating database code objects including views, storing procedures, and functions as a part of database migration.

SQL Server to S3 applies to SQL Server databases of any size. It is applicable to validate the target database during replication of data from the source to target. This saves a lot of time during data validation. However, this solution is only possible when there are no limitations on SQL Server usage as a source for AWS DMS.

What are the benefits of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) that is attractive enough for organizations wanting to migrate databases from Microsoft SQL Server to S3? The primary reason is that S3 offers unmatched scalability and durability. Being based in the cloud, S3 provides unlimited storage facilities. This eliminates the need for businesses to invest in additional hardware and software whenever there is a sharp rise in demand for storage capabilities.

Some of the other optimized features of Amazon S3 include access management, data replication, data protection, and cost affordability. Database replication with AWS DMS for SQL Server to S3 is possible both outside and within the Region. S3 can also go through billions of objects of Batch Operations.

While database migration SQL Server to S3is a seamless and mostly automated process, there are certain conditions that have to be configured first.

•The AWS account that is used for the migration should have an IAM role. Specific permissions should be given for specific activities like write and delete access to target S3 bucket.

•Both the DMS replication instance for migrating the data and the S3 bucket being used as target have to be in the same AWS region.

•There should be tagging access in the role. It will ensure that objects that are written to the target bucket can be tagged via AWS CDC S3

•DMS (dms.amazonaws.com) is present in the IAM role as an additional entity.

•Ensure that the user assigned the role of handling the migration process has the required permissions to do so.

S3 is provided by Amazon and is useful for those who currently have limited needs for storage but which might increase to terabytes of data in the future. The data migrating feature AWS CDC S3is available in the 3.1.3 version of DMS. S3 is also used to support DMS while creating data lakes.