You've done your research and, after reading Getting your Cloud Migration Strategy Right, built your value proposition for migrating your workloads to the cloud. You've also done your homework by reading Planning a Successful Cloud Migration, but you have some lingering questions about your data and its path to the cloud. Continue reading to learn more about Oracle's database offerings and your migration options.
If you already work with an on-premise Oracle Database, you've already made a great decision and you have a number of options for migrating your data to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Database Service database. When considering your target system, Oracle has a number of database options to choose from, depending on your needs. Below is a select list of choices.
Oracle Database Offerings
- Oracle Autonomous Database is an all-in-one cloud database solution that employs machine learning to completely automate all routine database tasks—ensuring higher performance, reliability, security, and operational efficiency. Options include:
- Autonomous Data Warehouse optimized for analytics
- Autonomous Transaction Processing optimized for running transactional, analytical, and batch workloads concurrently
- Autonomous JSON Database, a cloud document database service that makes it simple to develop JSON-centric applications
- Oracle APEX Application Development, a low-code application development platform
- Exadata Database Service is the most secure architecture for running Oracle Database. Exadata infrastructure can reduce your data center footprint and accelerate time to market for mission-critical workloads.
- Oracle Base Database Service allows organizations to create and manage full-featured Oracle Database instances in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). IT teams provision databases on virtual machines with block storage volumes providing cost-efficient cloud database services with a choice of Oracle Database editions, including Oracle Enterprise Database Service and Oracle Standard Database Service.
- Oracle MySQL HeatWave is the only service that enables database admins and app developers to run OLTP and OLAP workloads directly from their MySQL database. This eliminates the need for complex, time-consuming, and expensive data movement and integration with a separate analytics database.
- Oracle NoSQL Database Service provides on-demand throughput and storage-based provisioning that supports document, columnar, and key-value data models, all with flexible transaction guarantees.
Cloud@Customer Options
If, after looking at all the choices above, you're starting to get cold feet about moving your data to the cloud you have the option to leave your data where it is. Oracle Cloud@Customer enables you to use Oracle’s fully managed cloud services in your data center so you can take advantage of the same high-performance capabilities, autonomous operations, and low-cost subscription pricing found in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure while maintaining complete control of your data so you can address data sovereignty, security, and connectivity concerns.
Exadata Cloud@Customer is the simplest way to move existing Oracle databases to the cloud because it provides full compatibility with existing Exadata systems and Exadata Cloud Service.
Choosing a Migration Method
There are a number of techniques and tools available to migrate your on-premise Oracle Database to an OCI database service database. Let's look at some of the factors you should consider.
What To Consider
There are quite a few factors to consider when choosing a migration method including your on-premise database version, the target database service database version, your on-premise host operating system and version, and database character sets. Gathering the below information will help inform which migration methods are availble to you.
- Database version of your on-premises database
- For on-premises Oracle Database 12c Release 2 and Oracle Database 12c Release 1 databases, whether it is a multitenant container database (CDB) or Non-CDB
- Endian format (byte ordering) of your on-premises database’s host platform
- Database character set of both your source and target databases.
- Target database version
What To Do Before You Migrate
Before you migrate your database, you can reduce downtime and speed the process by upgrading to the target platform version, dropping unused objects, and performing other optimizations.
- Clean up: Make your database administration easier by doing your spring cleaning before you migrate. Consider dropping unnecessary schema objects in your source database before the migration in order to reduce the amount of data you need to migrate.
- Upgrade: Consider upgrading your source database to match the target database version as this may improve the migration process.
- Break it up: Consider whether you can perform your migration in stages. For example, if your source database contains a large amount of read-only data, it might be migrated before the live data migration in order to reduce downtime.
Connectivity
You will need to connect your on-premise database to your Oracle Cloud Infrastructure tenancy in order to complete your data migration. Your connectivity options are listed below in order of preference.
- FastConnect provides a secure connection between your existing network and your virtual cloud network (VCN) over a private physical network instead of the internet.
- Site-to-Site VPN provides a secure connection between a dynamic routing gateway (DRG) and customer-premise equipment (CPE), consisting of multiple IPSec tunnels.
- Internet Gateway provides a path for network traffic between your VCN and the internet.
Migration Methods
The table below will help you figure out which methods are available based on the version, character set, and platform endian format of the source and target databases.
| Method | Notes |
|---|---|
| Data Pump Conventional Export/Import | You can use this regardless of the endian format and database character set of the on-premises database. |
| Data Pump Full Transportable | You can use this only if the source database release version is 11.2.0.3 or later, and the database character sets are compatible |
| Data Pump Transportable Tablespace | You can use this method only if the on-premises platform is little endian, and the database character sets are compatible |
| Remote Cloning a PDB | You can use this method only if the on-premises platform is little endian, the on-premises database release is 12.1.0.2 or higher, and the source and target have compatible database character sets and national character sets |
| Remote Cloning Non-CDB | You can use this method only if the on-premises platform is little endian, the on-premises database release is 12.1.0.2 or higher, and the source and target have compatible database character sets and national character sets |
| RMAN Cross-Platform Transportable PDB | This method can be used only if the on-premises platform is little endian, and the database character sets are compatible. |
| RMAN Cross-Platform Transportable Tablespace Backup Sets | You can use this method only if the database character sets are compatible |
| RMAN Transportable Tablespace with Data Pump | You can use this method only if the on-premises platform is little endian, and the database character sets are compatible |
| RMAN CONVERT Transportable Tablespace with Data Pump | You can use this method only if the database character sets are compatible |
| SQL Developer and INSERT Statements to Migrate Selected Objects | Your target must be a Oracle Database 12c database in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Database service |
| SQL Developer and INSERT Statements to Migrate Selected Objects | Your target must be a Oracle Database 12c database in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Database service |
| Unplugging/Plugging a PDB |
You can use this method to migrate an Oracle Database 12c PDB to a PDB in an Oracle Database 12c database on a Database service database deployment only if the on-premises platform is little endian and the source and target have compatible database character sets and national character sets |
| Unplugging/Plugging Non-CDB | You can use this method to migrate a non-CDB database to a PDB in an Oracle Database 12c database on a Database service database deployment only if the on-premises platform is little endian and the source and target have compatible database character sets and national character sets |
| Zero Downtime Migration Service | Depending on your database source and target destination, Zero Downtime Migration supports different migration methods |
What if I Don't Use an Oracle Database?
Feeling left out when looking at all the options for how to migrate Oracle databases to the cloud? Don't worry, there's a number of solutions for migrating your non-Oracle data to OCI database services. Here's a couple popular migration paths:
- Migrate a Microsoft SQL Server database to Oracle Cloud shows you how to convert a Microsoft SQL Server to Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse in OCI.
- Migrate an IBM Db2 to an Oracle Autonomous Database shows you how to convert an IBM Db2 (LUW) database to Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse in OCI.
Solution Playbooks
We know that's a lot of information to take in, which is why Oracle architects, developers, and other experts provide guidance in our Oracle Architecture Center. We have a number of solution playbooks, which are targeted, cross-product explanations and architectures showing you how to handle or implement a specific scenario on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure - in this case data migration. Visit the Oracle Architecture Center to see our database migration solution playbooks.
Shea Nolan
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