Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation

Migrate to Autonomous Database Using Oracle Database Migration Service

You can migrate data to an Autonomous Database using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Database Migration Service that is a fully managed cloud service created to ease the move of established databases from on-premise, third-party, or on Oracle Cloud to Autonomous Database.

Database Migration Service provides you a high performing, self-service experience for migrating databases to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Database Migration runs as a managed cloud service separate from your tenancy and resources. The service leverages Oracle's Zero Downtime Migration (ZDM) engine utilizing Oracle GoldenGate replication to provide enterprise-level database migration with minimal downtime. It operates as a multitenant service in a Database Migration service tenancy and communicates with your resources using Private Endpoints (PEs). PEs are managed by Database Migration. To know about the capabilities of Database Migration Service, see About Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Database Migration.

Database Migration Service supports a wide range of source databases for migrating to Autonomous Database. To view the complete list of supported source database versions, see Source Database Requirements. As of the current release, Database Migration supports only Autonomous Database Serverless and Autonomous Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure as the migration targets.

You can perform database migration in two different modes, as:
  • Online Migration: Online migration uses Oracle GoldenGate replication for continuous synchronization from the source database to the target database. Online migration requires SQL*Net connectivity from the GoldenGate host running in the target tenancy to the source database. Oracle Data Pump and its two options are leveraged for initial instantiation. See Online Migration for details.
  • Offline Migration: Using the offline migration method, Database Migration exports the data from the source database to the Object Store, and then imports the data from the Object Source to the target database on the Cloud using Data Pump. You must stop updates on the Source database before starting offline migration. Also, the target and source database do not need any direct SQL*Net connectivity between them, once the migration completes.
Initial Load and Replication are two important aspects of database migration using the Database Migration Service.
  • Initial Load migrates the contents of all schemas from the source to schemas of the same name in the target database. You can elect to exclude specific objects and rename objects when you create a migration in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Database Migration.
  • Replication migrates all data and metadata operations in transactions committed after the initial load until you resume the migration job after the Monitor Replication Lag phase. It includes inserts, deletes, and updates of data in tables within the migrated schema. Create, alter, and drop DDL operations are not replicated.

To learn how to use Database Migration Service, refer to Database Migration: Prerequisites and Steps Involved in Using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Database Migration Service.