For many enterprises, hosting a Microsoft SQL Server on-premises can be a resource intensive endeavor, especially when it comes to operating and maintaining the server. More and more enterprises are migrating their databases to the cloud to fully enjoy the benefits of a cloud-based deployment. This article illustrates a possible solution for customers to migrate all on-premises SQL Server databases to an Alibaba Cloud ApsaraDB RDS for SQL Server instance with minimal down time.
This article will make up a typical sample use case and environment, and then elaborate the migration solutions on the sample environment.
Transactional Database
Hot/Standby
CPU: 32 Memory: 98259 (MB) Storage: 800GB
Version: 11.0.5058.0 Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise: Core-based Licensing (64-bit)
Customer has a VPN link between on-premises IDC and Alibaba Cloud VPC.
A physical leased line between them is more favourable.
Alibaba Cloud ApsaraDB RDS for SQL is a managed database service in Alibaba Cloud. It is mostly compatible with all feature of SQL Server of different versions. However, as this is a managed database service on the cloud which has certain limitations, you should evaluate the differences between the on-premises and RDS before making a right migration decision in terms of database version and features.
Alibaba Cloud Database Assessment Expert tool (DAE) is an offline tool to evaluate the compatibility of your existing SQL Server version on-premises and Alibaba Cloud RDS for SQL Server. This DAE tool will potentially look into following features in your database and give report with regard to that. This tool can be deployed on any Windows OS host with .net environment which is accessible to the targeted SQL Server database.
The following features are fully supported if the right version of RDS for SQL Server is chosen in Alibaba Cloud.
The following may have small differences between Alibaba Cloud RDS and on-premises SQL Server, but adjustment effort for migration is small.
You can refer to Real-time SQL Server Migration to Alibaba Cloud ApsaraDB RDS for SQL Server and get more.
We have discussed Using Asymmetric Keys to Implement Column Encryption, Database Recovery Models and Backups, Monitoring Backup and Restore Progress, Using Filegroups to Implement Cold and Hot Data Isolation Backup Solution, and Migrating to ApsaraDB RDS for SQL Server Using SDK in the ApsaraDB for RDS SQL Server in just one click.
Scenario Description
In the Migrating to ApsaraDB RDS for SQL Server Using SDK article that we covered last month, we implemented the automated migration of an on-premises or self-created database on ECS to ApsaraDB RDS for SQL Server. This is a solution for database-level migration to the cloud, that is, only one offline database is migrated to the cloud each time.
However, a user may have multiple SQL Server instances, and each instance may have tens of databases. For medium to large businesses, there could be thousands of databases that must be migrated to the cloud. The traditional solution for database-level migration to the cloud cannot meet the requirements of this scenario and is very inefficient.
To meet the requirements for migrating a large batch of databases to ApsaraDB RDS for SQL Server, we need to simplify the migration steps, and improve the migration-to-cloud efficiency.
In the article Migrating to ApsaraDB RDS for SQL Server Using SDK, we implemented a solution for migrating a single database to the cloud. Similarly, we can use the following steps to implement a solution for migrating instance-level databases to the cloud:
In this article, we'll discuss how you can implement the migration of a SQL Server database to Alibaba Cloud ApsaraDB RDS for SQL Server through the RDS SDK.
In this issue, we show you how to use Alibaba Cloud RDS SDK to implement the migration of offline user data backup files to Alibaba Cloud ApsaraDB RDS for SQL Server.
For those who do not want to implement the database migration to cloud RDS SQL Server through RDS console and have advanced programming ability, consider using RDS SDK to implement the offline database migration to cloud the RDS SQL instance.
The offline user database backup files are located in OSS, so the migration to the cloud requires designing an OSS-related SDK and an RDS-related SDK.
The offline user database backup files are stored in Bucket on OSS, so obtaining database backup files from OSS requires using the OSS SDK. When getting the backup files from OSS, we also need to know the Region where OSS Bucket is located because the migration to the cloud requires the RDS instance to be in the same Region as OSS Bucket. From these analyses, we must know the name of OSS Bucket, its Endpoint and backup filename bak_file_key.
The RDS instance refers to the target RDS SQL instance that users need to migrate to the cloud. We need to know the version information of the RDS SQL instance (input parameters for RDS SQL 2008R2 and 2012 and above are slightly different), the Region where the instance is located (RDS instance needs to be in the same Region as OSS bucket), and the name of the database on the target instance. Based on the analysis, for the RDS instance, we need to know the RDS SQL ID and database name.
To access Alibaba Cloud resources, users need to use the AK of the Alibaba Cloud account or sub-account, namely, access_key_id and access_key_secret, therefore, these two parameters are also necessary. So, finally, our input parameters are defined as the following seven parameters.
Learn how you will be affected by the end of Windows and SQL Server 2008 support in 2020, and how you can future-proof your infrastructure through containerization.
Microsoft has been reminding their customers, for quite some time now, that Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 will be out of support as per its lifecycle support schedule. Although there is less than a year remaining for the support to expire, many organizations still have their applications hosted on these platforms.
End of extended support means Microsoft will stop providing any security updates for these products, which means that all apps hosted on these platforms will be vulnerable to security threats. With so many regulations to comply with nowadays, and especially with the GDPR in place from 2018, the last thing any organization want is loss of revenue and reputation resulting from a security breach. Therefore, it is crucial for organizations to act now before it is too late.
In 2014, when we were facing with a similar risk - for Windows 2003 and SQL 2005 - we did not have many options. You had to either:
This course aims to help users and engineers who want to migrate databases from third-party cloud platforms to Alibaba Cloud. By learning this course, you can get a comprehensive understanding of what cross-platform database migration is, the DTS, a common tool of database migration on Alibaba Cloud, and the scenarios for migrating cloud databases from third-party cloud platforms to Alibaba Cloud ApsaraDB for RDS, so as to provide a reference for database migration across cloud platforms.
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Server Migration Center (SMC) is a migration platform developed by Alibaba Cloud. SMC can help you migrate one or more source servers to Alibaba Cloud.
SMC can help you migrate one or more source servers to Alibaba Cloud. The source servers include IDC servers, virtual machines, cloud hosts on other cloud platforms, and other types of servers. For more information about SMC, its tutorials and best practices, see What is SMC?
SMC consists of a client and a console. Import the information of a source server to the console through the client. This step connects the source server with your Alibaba Cloud account. Then, create a migration task in the console for the source server and start the migration task to migrate the source server to Alibaba Cloud. For more information, see Migration process.
SMC can migrate one or more migration sources to Alibaba Cloud. Migration sources refer to IDC servers, virtual machines, cloud hosts on other platforms, or other types of servers that you want to migrate. Migration sources are also known as source servers. This topic aims to help you understand the migration process of SMC.
When SMC performs a migration, it performs operations both on the migration source and in the SMC console. You must import information from the migration source to the SMC console, and then complete the migration task in the SMC console.
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