AWS Database Migration Service Reviews

DMS's architecture is highly beneficial, allowing for scalable migrations of large datasets. The service's change data capture feature is precious, enabling synchronization between the old and new systems, and providing customers with real-time data visibility.

There could be enhancements in the product intelligently covering more scenarios to prevent crashes or failures. Improved dashboard capabilities for monitoring jobs and the ability to resume migrations from the last successful point instead of starting over would significantly enhance the user experience.

I have utilized Database Migration Service to migrate data from IBM DB2 to Amazon, from Oracle to PostgreSQL on RDS, and from SQL Server to AWS MySQL. 

DMS' seamless integration with other AWS services enhances its functionality and usability than other solutions. The continuous data replication feature also sets it apart, allowing for minimal downtime and real-time data synchronization during the migration.

The initial setup process is straightforward and user-friendly, provided that the operators understand the migration sizes involved.

The implementation strategy begins with assessing the size of the database to be migrated and understanding the customer's key performance indicators for success. It helps tailor the migration process to meet their expectations effectively.

Key features of DMS that are effective for large-scale migrations include the continuous data replication capability, which minimizes downtime, and support for heterogeneous database migrations. Additionally, it allows for multi-threaded processing and provides monitoring capabilities, making it easier to manage the migration process.

The monitoring capabilities are robust, providing detailed logs and metrics through CloudWatch. It allows me to track the status of migration tasks in real time, assess performance, and quickly identify and resolve any issues that arise during the migration process.

I encountered a data conversion issue related to changing time formats from UTC to a different format. By leveraging the transformation feature within DMS, I successfully converted the data to meet the customer's requirements.

I ensure that sensitive data is encrypted in transit and at rest using AWS Key Management Service (KMS). Additionally, I conduct thorough assessments of access controls and compliance requirements specific to the client's industry.

I stay updated with the latest features and enhancements related to AWS services by regularly attending webinars, participating in AWS training sessions, and following industry publications. Engaging with the AWS community through forums and conferences provides valuable insights and updates.

Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

My company uses AWS Database Migration Service as a small data warehouse.

What I like about AWS Database Migration Service is that it is available on the cloud, and you don't need any admins. If you want the backup then you can store it online directly. With the product in place, users can focus on what they want to do, and there is no need to do a lot of maintenance as there are no complications that arise in the tool. It is a maintenance-free product.

I haven't faced any problems with the product till now. In general, I don't see any complications in the solution.

The names of the services need improvement since AWS doesn't indicate what the function of the product is presently. You need to read a lot to find the service that you want in the product.

I have been using AWS Database Migration Service for three years. I use the solution's latest version.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

It is a very scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Around ten people in my company who are data analyst specialists work with the product.

There are no plans to increase the number of uses of the product. My company is currently operating with the maximum number of people required to use the solution.

The technical support of AWS is very helpful.

I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have experience with VMware. I no longer work with VMware since I want all the products in our company to be connected to a cloud.

The product's initial setup phase was very easy.

The solution is deployed on a private cloud.

As the product is used for multiple projects, there is no specific time that can be pointed out when it comes to the time required to deploy the product. Initially, my company started off with the product's demo phase, after which we started to use it. In the end, I didn't face any challenges when trying to upgrade the product or create new tables or procedures, as it was very smooth and easy with the tool.

At a global level, the price of the product is very good. For Egypt, the product's prices are high, making it a specific problem in one region and not globally. There are additional payments to be made towards AWS Builder ID and bandwidth. If you compare the output of the product with the prices, cost-wise, it is a nice product.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it.

The meaning in the name of the services is not indicative of what it does. Okay. It is a challenging task to handle if something is broken. Users have to depend heavily on their AWS partners when it comes to the product. If a partner is good, then the users are happy with the services provided by the product. If the partner doesn't do a good job, then users may face sudden problems, and they may not know how to deal with such issues.

I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.

We use this solution to get our data into Lakehouse with the CDC. So, Change Data Capture is also very important for us. AWS Database Migration Service has an inbuilt functionality for capturing change data.

The identifier of this solution informs us whether it's an insert operation, an update operation, or a delete operation. Since our main data is OLTP, the status of the order can keep changing; it can easily go from payment to successful and resend to cancel. 

This solution is very good at mini-batch processing if a user needs a latency between thirty seconds and two minutes. 

This solution can offer more tweaks where the latency can be brought down to fifteen seconds. DMS is not the go-to choice when it comes to data streaming, and the major reason is the latency issues because it's file-based and not message-based. So if DMS could offer such a solution, it has the potential to replace Kafka as well. DMS is more of a one-click setup in comparison to Kafka. 

I have been using the solution for two months. 

The solution is very stable. We haven't faced any downtimes yet. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. We haven't faced any issues with scalability. As it's a background service that is actually replicating our data, DMS does not have an end user; it only turns the data into S3. When we connect to the database, that is when the end user comes into the picture. 

Our previous architecture was based on Debezium and Kafka, where Debezium was being used as a CDC tool. The learning curve for Debezium is much more steep as compared to AWS Database Migration Service. Also, with Debezium, if you are not using any external vendors, then you need to have DMS self-hosted on your own Kubernetes cluster. 

The setup process for this product is quite simple and AWS has provided very good documentation for this purpose. 

We implemented the solution in-house. 

I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten. 

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. I would definitely recommend this product to others. 

We use this solution to enable us to carry out heavy, data-level migrations across multiple ETL tools.

We particularly like that this solution has the facility to integrate with all ETL tools.

We also like that this solution provides us with high speed velocity, performance, scalability, and throughput for our data migration tasks.

We would like to see some improvement in the performance of large scale procedures, such as when we migrate from Oracle to csSQL.

We have been working with this solution for over five years.

We would rate this solution a 10 out of 10.

What I find most valuable in AWS Database Migration Service are these features: the full load and continuous data replication to heterogeneous endpoints.

There's a lot of room for improvement in AWS Database Migration Service, e.g. more endpoints to be supported, more control and transparency on the product and on how we get things done, and better operational support.

I've been working with AWS Database Migration Service for two years.

The solution is stable, but we have migrated a lot of those data sets to Qlik Attunity. I also worked for Qlik Attunity for consulting and database DMS.

AWS Database Migration Service is scalable, but Qlik Attunity is more scalable.

The technical support for AWS Database Migration Service is bad. They are still figuring out how to support their product. I've reached out to some AWS resources, but they don't understand the support.

The initial setup for the solution was moderate. It had some learning curve, but it was moderate. It was okay, and it was not difficult to learn.

How reasonable the pricing for AWS Database Migration Service would be, depends on where we are getting this data migrated from. Pricing for the solution is reasonable, but it could still be reduced.

I evaluated Qlik Attunity.

I use a lot of Qlik Attunity and AWS Database Migration Service.

I'm more of a consultant/engineer, so I use Database Migration Services to move data across different instances from on-premises to AWS, etc.

My advice to people who want to implement the solution is that there are alternate products. AWS Database Migration Service is still a good start, but an alternate product such as Qlik Attunity does a very good job, e.g. Attunity gives you more control.

I'm giving AWS Database Migration Service a six out of ten rating.

We're currently moving our whole database from AWS to Oracle. We want to avoid interrupting production systems, so we're using DMS to continuously replicate data from the AWS RDS database to the Oracle database in OCI. Once we're sure all data is consistent, we'll switch over to Oracle and shut down the AWS database.

This should minimize downtime to about 15 minutes, and all our services in AWS then point to the Oracle database.

For our simple requirement of migration, DMS is just a typical AWS RDS with an IPSec tunnel to Oracle. The most valuable features for us are the networking capabilities like VPCs and VPNs.

Currently, we're happy with DMS because it's simple and meets our needs. We're still syncing the data, but once that's done, we'll cut off the AWS database. Compared to Oracle GoldenGate, DMS is definitely easier to use. We haven't encountered any major difficulties.

The cost is a concern. We use DMS because of its simplicity, but the price could definitely be more competitive.

So, in my opinion, some potential areas for improvement are price and possibly supporting Oracle Autonomous Database (ADB) on AWS, as it's a powerful option.

Oracle ADB on AWS would significantly reduce our migration workload. Price and lack of ADB support are the main downsides of DMS for us right now. In fact, about 60% of our monthly AWS costs go towards database services.

We've been using DMS for a while to replicate databases between AWS and Oracle, mainly for backups and test environments.

I would rate the stability a six out of ten. It took us a while to get it running smoothly. It wasn't entirely straightforward. But once it was set up, it was stable. AWS support was helpful during the initial setup.

We haven't encountered any scalability issues so far. We might need to increase the database size later, but it's not a problem. So, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We actually bumped up our support level for extra coverage, and they've been very helpful. We also have AWS expertise on our team, so there haven't been many difficulties. Overall, the support is good.

The biggest challenge we faced was setting up the IPSec tunnel between the two private networks. It took a while to figure out why they weren't communicating even though the tunnel was up. Luckily, our AWS networking experts managed to fix the routing issue.

Neutral

Currently, we're moving from AWS to Oracle. We're migrating our database, and that's already been taken care of. The issue with AWS has been addressed, and we no longer have any problems with it.

We're new to DMS. We decided to use it about three months ago. That's why we compared DMS with GoldenGate to choose the best option for migrating our database. 

The setup process was simple enough for us because our database is plain and doesn't have many blocks. It's just a typical cloud-based product, like most AWS services.

We use the enterprise and the AWS license, which is a bit expensive. We're consolidating our databases from AWS to Oracle, which we find more cost-effective. So, we're using an autonomous database in Oracle, a feature not offered by AWS.

We've been using AWS for a long time, including for non-Oracle services, and overall, we're very happy. It's much better than GoldenGate, which was a headache for us. 

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We were using the solution for the migration and replication of data.

AWS Database Migration Service is good for smaller workloads and provides compatibility.

The solution’s scalability and performance could be improved.

I have been using AWS Database Migration Service since it came up.

I rate the solution a six or seven out of ten for scalability.

The solution’s technical support is good.

Neutral

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

The solution’s pricing is reasonable.

AWS Database Migration Service is a cloud-based solution.

Overall, I rate AWS Database Migration Service a six or seven out of ten.

We have taken that as a Platform as a Service. So, how we are running here, we just migrated whatever database instance in the rack was there to AWS. It was an "as-it-is" migration. 

For data, we tried to use SSIS to transfer the data from the patch to AWS.

The main thing why people are going behind AWS is the cost. 

For example, on the current project, I am working with an insurance company. So the basic thing is they want to accomplish whatever add-on services AWS provides, but they don't want to go all in a single step. Plus, they want to see what the platform is. Then they look step by step. So, it is an incremental adoption kind of thing.

So, we are helping and enhancing our knowledge of that.  

As a solution, the better thing is if more platforms come with direct compatibility, like connecting to different data sources. 

The basic problem I faced the most was while transferring and reading data from Excel. So, one time, I found that all the components I had declared in my scripts were able to take it. 

And after some patching happens, it is not able to support that. Again, we need to update the version of Excel. So, it's not like a plug-in type place where you have done the solution and are confident that it will work. So, this is an area of improvement. 

If we look at Microsoft products, most things look or are plug-and-play. For example, if you are using storage as a service, we need to go for CLI commands. So, those types of stuff that's not as easy as using a Microsoft product, like DDoS, that level of easiness is not there.

In the project I am in, we migrated from SQL Server from RAS to AWS recently.

I would rate the stability a six out of ten. We had some issues with stability.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. It is able to scale up and fulfill requirements. 

The only thing weakness is compatibility. Like, once you program and forget it, it's not that type of thing. 

I faced some problems while patching; new things come up, and sometimes old things don't support, causing a bit of a headache for me. 

We have a big-sized company with various clients. 

Experience with customers and support was good. I got a good response. It was not a delayed response, or it was not that I had to go back to the multiple times for the issue. It was not there. 

Overall, I had a good experience with the support.

The initial setup is simple. Not that much complex.

The pricing is neither high nor low. It is value for money. Moreover, the facilities or the add-ons they give are good.

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.