Moving a company's core data infrastructure to the cloud is one of the most significant transformations a business can undertake. It promises agility, cost savings, and innovation, but the path is often complex and fraught with risk.
To demystify this journey, we sat down with Alex, the Head of the Database Migration Department at Ispirer. Alex has guided dozens of companies, from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises, through the process of moving their critical database workloads to Amazon Web Services.
Many business leaders hear "database migration" and immediately think of complexity and downtime. Where do you even begin to tackle such a project?
Alex: The key is to see it as a structured journey, not a single task. A successful migration is about a methodical and well-planned process. If you build the right foundation and follow a clear roadmap, you can avoid the typical pitfalls that lead to delays and cost overruns.
A roadmap sounds much more manageable. What does this journey look like?
Alex: We use a four-phase framework, which is the standard AWS prescriptive guidance because it works. First, you have the Prepare phase. This is all about discovery. You create a complete inventory of every database, understand its workload, and identify all the application dependencies. This is also where you align with the business to define the goals: are we trying to save money, gain agility, or improve security?
We use our comprehensive automated assessment solution, InsightWays, at this stage and the next one. It's absolutely free to use for anyone planning a big move to AWS.
Got it, what's next?
Once you know what you have, you move into the Plan phase. Here you make two key decisions: you choose how you will move the database, and you select the target AWS database service. Then comes the Migrate phase, which is the actual technical work. It involves things like schema conversion, moving the data, and a lot of testing before the final cutover.
And finally, you have the Operate and Optimize phase. The job is not done just because you have moved. This last phase is about realizing the full value of the cloud by monitoring performance, optimizing costs, and setting up solid backup and disaster recovery plans.
In the planning phase, you mentioned choosing a migration strategy. I've heard terms like "lift and shift." Could you break down the main options?
Alex: Of course. Most database migrations fall into one of three categories. The choice really depends on what you need to prioritize: speed, cost, or performance.
The simplest is what we call Rehost, or "lift and shift." Think of it as moving your house without changing any of the furniture. You take your existing database server and move it as-is onto an Amazon EC2 instance. You do this when speed is everything — maybe a data center lease is about to expire. It is the lowest effort, but you also get the fewest cloud benefits.
What about the other two?
Replatform is a more common middle ground. This is like moving to a new apartment and upgrading to the modern appliances that come with it. You move the database to a managed AWS service like Amazon RDS. The core of your application does not change, but you offload management tasks like backups and patching to AWS. It is a great balance of effort and reward.
The most involved approach is Refactor, or re-architecting. This is like building a brand-new, custom home from the ground up. You redesign the application and database to be fully cloud-native, moving from a commercial engine like Oracle to a service like Amazon Aurora.
It is the highest effort and cost, but it gives you the maximum performance and long-term savings. You would do this for a big modernization push.
Read more:Rehost, Refactor, or Rebuild? 8 Ways to Modernize Legacy Systems
That's a great breakdown. It seems like a tough choice between the immediate win of replatforming and the long-term value of refactoring.
Alex: It is. For large-scale migrations, the official guidance often recommends against refactoring during the initial move because of the complexity. The best practice is a phased modernization strategy. First, you Rehost or Replatform to get into the AWS ecosystem quickly.
Once you are safely in the cloud, you can begin a second phase to refactor the application in place. This approach is a far less risky, pragmatic plan.
Once a strategy is chosen, you mentioned selecting a target database. AWS has so many options — RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB. How do you choose the right one?
Alex: The power of the cloud is using purpose-built databases for specific needs. The choice depends on your data type, volume, and how you need to query it. For your typical structured data — customer orders, financial transactions — you are looking at relational databases.
The workhorse here is Amazon RDS. It is a managed service for popular SQL engines like MySQL and PostgreSQL, and it is perfect for general-purpose apps or when you replatform an existing database.
Then you have Amazon Aurora, which is AWS's own cloud-native version. It is also relational and compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL, but it is built for high-performance and mission-critical applications. It is incredibly resilient; it replicates six copies of your data across three different locations.
For applications that need massive scale and do not fit that rigid relational model, you would look at NoSQL. The main player there is Amazon DynamoDB. That is a NoSQL, key-value database. It is serverless and gives you incredible speed, so it is great for web-scale apps, gaming, or IoT.
And it is important not to confuse those with a data warehouse, which is for analytics. For that, you have Amazon Redshift. Its job is purely business intelligence and running complex analytics on huge datasets.
We've recently made up a whole playbook about AWS database types. Anyone can download it for later use.
What are the main tools AWS provides to actually move the data?
Alex: The two primary services are AWS Database Migration Service, or DMS, and the AWS Schema Conversion Tool, or SCT. I like to say that DMS is the moving truck, and SCT is the universal power adapter.
DMS is the service that moves your data. Its most powerful feature is something called Change Data Capture, which replicates changes from your old database to the new one in near real-time. This is the key to doing a migration with almost zero downtime.
You need SCT, the "power adapter," for what we call heterogeneous migrations — when you move between different database engines, like from Oracle to PostgreSQL. It reads your old database structure and automatically converts it to a format the new engine can use.
Are there tools other than the Amazon-provided ones?
Amazon's tools are powerful, but other providers, including Ispirer, seem to better satisfy complex migration needs. Amazon is a giant provider of almost anything you need to survive in the digital age. However, when it comes to customization and flexible support, they often lack the necessary capacity.
That is why we've made our own toolkit for AWS migrations. It includes two core software solutions: InsightWays for free assessment and SQLWays for actual migration. Alongside, we offer turnkey migration services, in case the customer doesn't have in-house engineers with migration expertise.
It is often way easier to make a move with our set of tools and expert support because we're always open to customization requests and constantly adjust our solutions based on feedback we’ve received from previous customers. Plus, we upgrade them with minimal downtime in mind.
You can also always refer to our list of 20 best AWS migration tools, where we make an honest breakdown of AWS-native and third-party migration solutions, their pricing, features, best use cases, etc.
This brings us to the moment everyone dreads: the cutover. How do you manage this to minimize business disruption?
Alex: We usually use a safer method than an all-at-once cutover — a phased or incremental approach. Here, we might route 10% of your users to the new system, monitor it, and then gradually increase the percentage.
This way, we reduce risk by containing the impact of any potential issues. And no plan is complete without a tested rollback plan to quickly and safely redirect traffic back to the original system if needed.
So the application is live on the new AWS database. Is the project done?
Alex: Not at all. This is the start of the Operate and Optimize phase. We use the AWS Well-Architected Framework to guide this review, focusing on security, reliability, performance, and cost. First, we do data validation, or proving that all the data made it over correctly.
Then, of course, there is security and compliance. We lock down access with IAM, encrypt all your data, and place databases in private networks, inaccessible from the public internet. After that, we make a solid backup and disaster recovery plan by defining with the business how quickly they need to be back online after an issue and how much data they can afford to lose.
A best practice is to use AWS Backup and set up cross-region replication. And finally, we get into the continuous loop of performance tuning and cost optimization. We use tools like CloudWatch to monitor the database and "right-size" it, making sure you are not paying for more capacity than you need.
As a final thought, what is the most common mistake you see companies make?
Alex: The most common mistake is a failure to prepare. Teams dive into the Migrate phase without a solid plan, without identifying dependencies, and without realistically assessing the complexity of the project.
Another pitfall is underestimating the difficulty of a heterogeneous migration — moving from Oracle to PostgreSQL is a translation project, not just a data copy. My single biggest piece of advice is to embrace the process. Invest heavily in the Prepare and Plan stages, as a successful migration is a strategic journey, not just a technical task.
We've made this process very accessible to businesses of all sizes by building InsightWays and offering it for free. The free assessment opportunity that we offer comes from our genuine desire to make migrations more well-planned.
And we constantly update it, too. Just last week, we released automated embedded SQL analysis within InsightWays, so you can take an even deeper look into your current setup. Feel free to use it for any AWS database migration you're planning.
