A Comprehensive Review of Migrating Oracle Database to Amazon S3

In the present business environment where data management requirements rule over everything else, organizations are continually exploring avenues to optimize their needs. The most preferred option is to implement solutions that offer massive storage and computing capabilities. 

How will you judge whether your data analytics is up to par? A few questions can provide the answers. Is your current server too slow for analytical and intricate queries? Do you have to combine data from multiple databases without a glitch? Are you investing in hardware and software to increase storage capacity and compute power every time you have to scale up? If you say YES to one or more, you would probably have to look for alternate solutions.

The object of this post is to elaborate on moving databases from Oracle to S3 to maximize the operational needs of businesses. There are reasons why these two have been selected. Oracle database had been launched commercially decades back and is one of the most widely used across industries. Amazon Simple Storage Service, on the other hand, is a comparatively new launch and being cloud-based, has a host of benefits to offer.

Before moving to how AWS helps Oracle database to be more efficient, migrating database Oracle to S3, and the tools required to do so, a quick look at the two will be in order.  

Oracle database

Oracle is mainly used for data warehousing and Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) and is a proprietary, multi-model relational database management system. The latest versions released though have columnar storage and on-cloud deployment features, somewhat similar to Amazon S3. 

Oracle supports GNU/LINUX and Windows Server and can be run on a wide range of hardware and software. Most applications easily merge into the database. Most importantly, Oracle is ACID-compliant with assured data reliability and integrity. Till S3 appeared on the scene in recent times, there were not many alternatives to the Oracle database for organizations.

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Services)

Amazon S3 is a cloud-based data warehousing solution optimized for OLAP (Online Analytical Processing). Any application can be launched on this platform in two steps – initiate an S3 cluster through API calls or the AWS Management Console and then connect to this S3 instance. This cloud-based object storage service provides a high degree of data availability, performance, scalability, and security. This is a critical reason for enterprises wanting to move database Oracle to S3. 

S3 with its many user-friendly management features can be used to backup, restore, and archive big data analytics, enterprise applications, and IoT devices. What gives Amazon S3 an edge among data management platforms are its 99.999999999 (11 9s) data durability and the capability to store almost unlimited applications. 

Migrating data Oracle to S3 – on-premise to the cloud

There are primarily two methods for migrating data Oracle to S3 that is, transferring data from on-premise to the cloud. 

• Importing Data, Oracle Data Pump, and Amazon S3 bucket – In this method, Oracle source data is exported using the Oracle DBMS_DATAPUMP package and the file is dumped in an Amazon S3 bucket. This file is then downloaded to the DATA_PUMP_DIR directory on the RDS Oracle DB instance. Finally, data from the dump file is imported and copied into the Amazon RDS Oracle DB instance using the DBMS_DATAPUMP package. 
• Importing Data, Oracle Data Pump, and a Database Link – In this method, the Oracle Data Pump and the Oracle DBMS_FILE_TRANSFER package are used to link to a source Oracle instance. It can either be an Amazon EC2 instance or an Amazon RDS for Oracle database instance. A DBMS_DATAPUMP package is used to export the Oracle data to a dump file which is then copied to the Amazon RDS Oracle DB instance using a connected database link. Finally, the data is imported through the DBMS_DATAPUMP package.  

It is important here to choose the right tools to successfully implement the process of migrating database Oracle to S3.

Optimized Tools to Migrate Oracle database to Amazon S3

For the migration process to be successful it is imperative to use the right and most optimized tools, otherwise, a script or a combination of scripts has to be written which can be a long-drawn-out affair. In such cases, the incremental load can be tricky to code and execute without any data inconsistencies or data loss. With enterprises requiring real-time data analytics reports, this execution may be required more than once in 24 hours. 

Hence a robust and optimized tool has to be selected for the process which can complete the process in three steps. You have to –

• First, connect to and configure the Oracle database 
• Next, choose the Replication mode and use a custom SQL query to choose the database tables in Oracle to be moved via load data
• Finally, configure the Amazon S3 Data Warehouse for data load    

The most optimized tool will have a fault-tolerant architecture to prevent data loss during loading.