Amazon AWS Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

Database Expert with 51-200 employees

Feb 12, 2014

Migrating to Amazon RDS

Having used AWS for a few years, there are numerous ways to get "your data" to the cloud. Usually the simplest is export/import (bias towards Oracle), but this process is usually slow when you start moving large data sets. There is the RMAN backup/recovery manager but this requires you to have the same instance version in the cloud - not good if you want to upgrade at the same time. Datapump is also available and is very useful as you can do Network data Pumps across database links - but again this can sometimes be slow.

I then looked into using Amazon's Advanced Data Migration Techniques (published Nov 13 2013) and decided to give it a go and have posted my walk through below (quite technical):

http://www.connecteddba.com/howto/MigratetoRDS.htm...

This was done from a local "data center" 100GB database, exported using datapump, copied to a M1.Xlarge EC2 in cloud and then copied further to the backend DATA_PUMP_DIR on the RDS instance (which you don't have access to). Then a datapump import into the RDS and job done - took me approx 12 hours in total (and that wasn't using Tsunami).

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user701412

Cloud Architect at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 25, 2017

Download

Easy provisioning means quick time to market when a new environment is required

What is most valuable?

RDS: Because of its auto-scaling, multi-zone availability, and its quick spin up of database servers.
EC2 Servers: For the agility of server provisioning and the AMI automations.
Lambda: Because of AI capabilities by writing functions that trigger on events.
Route 53: For traffic engineering.
WAF: For security and multiple other features of AWS.

How has it helped my organization?

Rolling deployments, quick time to market;

From one day deployment time, it came down to 15 minutes.

Easy provisioning means quick time to market when a new environment is required.

What needs improvement?

The console's UI could be a little better, a fluid User Experience is missing.

For example, in order to see the instance details properly, we have to scroll the description part up or down, which is not a recommended way of doing it.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Just once, when MongoDB infrastructure could not mount to EBS.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No.

How are customer service and technical support?

Excellent. 10 out of 10 for this.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

IBM Softlayer and Azure. Both are not automated to the level that AWS is automated.

How was the initial setup?

Straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pay per use.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes, RedHat OpenShift.

What other advice do I have?

Migrate to AWS for speed and agility, combined with its security features.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: