AWS Prescriptive Guidance Migrating Microsoft SQL Server databases to the AWS Cloud AWS Prescriptive Guidance Migrating Microsoft SQL Server databases to the AWS Cloud AWS Prescriptive Guidance: Migrating Microsoft SQL Server databases to the AWS Cloud Copyright © Amazon Web Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Amazon's trademarks and trade dress may not be used in connection with any product or service that is not Amazon's, in any manner that is likely to cause confusion among customers, or in any manner that disparages or discredits Amazon. All other trademarks not owned by Amazon are the property of their respective owners, who may or may not be affiliated with, connected to, or sponsored by Amazon. AWS Prescriptive Guidance Migrating Microsoft SQL Server databases to the AWS Cloud Table of Contents Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Overview ................................................................................................................................... 1 Migration strategies ............................................................................................................................ 3 Choosing the right migration strategy .......................................................................................... 3 Online and offline migration ....................................................................................................... 4 Migration methods ............................................................................................................................. 6 Native SQL Server backup/restore ................................................................................................ 9 Log shipping ............................................................................................................................ 10 Database mirroring ................................................................................................................... 11 Always On availability groups .................................................................................................... 11 Distributed availability groups .................................................................................................... 12 Transactional replication ........................................................................................................... 13 AWS Snowball Edge ................................................................................................................. 14 CloudEndure Migration ............................................................................................................. 14 Homogeneous database migration ..................................................................................................... 16 Amazon RDS for SQL Server ...................................................................................................... 16 When to choose Amazon RDS ............................................................................................ 17 High availability ............................................................................................................... 17 Read replicas ................................................................................................................... 19 Disaster recovery .............................................................................................................. 20 Amazon RDS on VMware ........................................................................................................... 21 When to choose Amazon RDS on VMware ........................................................................... 22 High availability ............................................................................................................... 22 Amazon EC2 for SQL Server ...................................................................................................... 22 When to choose Amazon EC2 ............................................................................................ 22 High availability ............................................................................................................... 23 Disaster recovery .............................................................................................................. 27 VMware Cloud on AWS for SQL Server ........................................................................................ 28 When to choose VMware Cloud on AWS .............................................................................. 28 Heterogeneous database migration .................................................................................................... 30 Tools ....................................................................................................................................... 31 AWS WQF ........................................................................................................................ 32 AWS SCT ......................................................................................................................... 32 AWS DMS ........................................................................................................................ 32 Hybrid migration scenarios ................................................................................................................ 34 Backing up your databases to the cloud ...................................................................................... 34 Extending high availability and disaster recovery solutions ............................................................ 34 Storage Gateway ...................................................................................................................... 35 Using AWS DMS and AWS SCT ................................................................................................... 35 Modernizing your SQL Server database ............................................................................................... 37 Migrating your SQL Server workloads from Windows to Linux ........................................................ 37 High availability on Linux .......................................................................................................... 37 AWS Launch Wizard .......................................................................................................................... 39 Best practices for migrating to Amazon RDS for SQL Server .................................................................. 41 Provisioning your target database .............................................................................................. 41 Backing up from your source database ........................................................................................ 41 Transferring data dump files to AWS .......................................................................................... 41 Restoring data to your target database ....................................................................................... 42 Post-migration steps ................................................................................................................. 42 Testing the migration ............................................................................................................... 42 Operating and optimizing your Amazon RDS database .................................................................. 42 Choosing between Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS ................................................................................ 44 Decision matrix ........................................................................................................................ 44 Shared responsibility ................................................................................................................ 53 iii AWS Prescriptive Guidance Migrating Microsoft SQL Server databases to the AWS Cloud SQL Server database migration patterns ............................................................................................. 55 Partners .......................................................................................................................................... 56 Additional resources ......................................................................................................................... 57 Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................ 58 Appendix: SQL Server database migration questionnaire ....................................................................... 59 General information ................................................................................................................. 59 Infrastructure ........................................................................................................................... 59 Database backups ..................................................................................................................... 60 Database features .................................................................................................................... 60 Database security ..................................................................................................................... 60 Database high availability and disaster recovery ..........................................................................