Data migrationto cloud services is the new long-term trend in the digital world of databases. Following are three main reasons of ever-increasing popularity of”Database as a Service” model

• Reduced TCO that is total cost of ownership
• Easily scalable hardware and software architectures
• Virtualization of data

Vendors providing Cloud based solutions

Following are vendors and IT corporations are offering cloud-based solution:
• SQL Azure – Cloud service for Microsoft SQL databases
• Database Cloud Service by Oracle -“Database as a Service” solution for Oracle databases
• Google Cloud SQL – Cloud service for relational databases based on MySQL engine
• IBM SmartCloud – IBM cloud service for DB2 databases
• Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) – Cloud services for MySQL, Microsoft SQL, IBM DB and Oracle databases provided by Amazon

Migration Process

The process of complete migration from database server to the cloud is performed in following steps.

1. Plan and setup

This step requires most of the contribution by human resources in terms of research and understanding and planning database applications semantic. There are some tools to help identify missing features in the destination database cloud, the role of project manager is to understand the working of a specific functionality in a particular database system and to find design alternatives. The key points to make decision about database migration are:

• Estimation of development efforts
• Cost of deploying the alternatives

1. Development& Application Changes

In most cases database migrationleads to some changes on application level.For example, when migrating data from Microsoft SQL to Azure SQL it is necessary to create clustered indexes for each table that does not have it. Also, Azure SQL does not support RESTORE statement and cannot attach databases to the SQL server.

In case no database objects are changed during the migration, the application architecture requires modifications due to differences in:

• Security
• Logging
• Error handling
• Robust retry logic.

1. Testing

This is definitely the most important and critical step of the entire migration process.

Below is the list of testing areas based on performance and functionality tests:

• Security system
• Handlingerrors
• Logging
• Logicof retryattempts
• Network issues
• Scale-out concept

During the test phase, database activity should be isolated otherwise results of benchmark may get distorted.

Intelligent Converters Solutions

Intelligent Converters software company provides a large range of tools and services to migrate data from any sources like PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL, IBM DB2, MS Access, DBase/FoxPro, MS Excel into private or public cloud. Thesetoolsautomate migration of the data, constraints, indexes and queries (views) into the cloud storage providingall necessary transformations. Their experts will carefully guide through all steps of migration process listed above providing necessary information and advises.

Wide collection of advanced tools and cutting-edge skills in this field allow Intelligent Converters to provide unique solutions to migrate databases to both private and public clouds.