Amazon adds new features to AWS Database Migration Service

New services include continuous replication between cloud and on-premise databases

Amazon Web Services has added a number of new features to its AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), including enhanced database compatibility, SSL-enabled endpoints, improved support for continuous data replication.

The AWS DMS is designed to enable IT professionals to migrate a database from an on-premise server to the AWS cloud with no downtime, and also allows them to migrate the dataset itself from one database engine to a different one, if required.

Made generally available in March, Amazon has now expanded the service with new capabilities. For example, as well as supporting one-time migration of data, it can now be used for continuous data replication, enabling customers to maintain a mirror of the data in case of a failure.

The feature supports replication from the customer's data centre to AWS, or in the reverse direction, replicating from a database operating on AWS to one in the customer's data centre.

The DMS already allows migration of data from one database engine, such as Oracle, to another, such as PostgreSQL, but the new continuous replication feature offers even more flexibility to choose the configuration that best suits a company's requirements.

Amazon recommends that for ongoing replication, customers should use Multi-AZ for high-availability, whereby the Amazon Relational Database Service automatically maintains a standby instance of a database in a separate AWS Availability Zone.

Other improvements focus on security. DMS now supports SSL-enabled endpoints for SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Amazon Aurora, MySQL and MariaDB, Amazon said.

Finally, the DMS also now supports the SAP ASE (formerly Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise) database as a source and target for database migration operations.

Customers now have the option to move data to and from an ASE database running on-premise or on Amazon EC2 virtual machines. Data can also be moved between ASE and any of the other database engines supported by DMS, including Amazon Redshift, the company said.