Google Database Migration Service accelerates cloud migrations

Around the world, enterprises across all industries are answering the call to move their business infrastructure including 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. Database migrations can be a challenge for enterprises. That’s why Google has come up with a uniquely easy, secure and reliable experience with Database Migration Service (DMS). 

What makes DMS different? 

1. Simple experience: 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.

2. 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, minimising database downtime and enabling fast application cutover. 

3. 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 maximise fidelity and reliability. 

4. 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. 

How does DMS work?

DMS provides high-fidelity, minimal downtime migrations for MySQL and PostgreSQL workloads. Google designed it to be truly cloud-native, built by and for the cloud. DMS utilises 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 maximises 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 DMS

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 optimise 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.

DMS 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, head on over to the DMS documentation.