Migrating Microsoft SQL Server workloads to the AWS Cloud

5 minute read

Content level: Intermediate

Do you want to migrate your Microsoft SQL Server databases to the AWS Cloud? You have many options to consider when you migrate your SQL Server workloads to AWS, each that can result in optimized price and performance and a more intuitive user experience.

Why should you migrate?

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AWS provides a comprehensive set of services and tools to deploy your Microsoft SQL Server databases on AWS Cloud infrastructure. AWS supports everything that you need to build and run Windows applications, including Active Directory, .NET, Microsoft SQL Server, Windows desktop-as-a-service, and all supported versions of Windows Server. You get the following benefits by running your SQL Server workloads on AWS:

Cost savings
Scalability
High availability and disaster recovery
Better performance
Ease of management

How do you choose the right migration strategy?

Choosing the correct strategy depends on your business requirements, resource constraints, migration timeframe, and cost considerations. The following diagram shows the effort and complexity involved in migrations, including all seven strategies:

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The best database migration strategy helps you to take full advantage of the AWS Cloud. This involves migrating your applications to use purpose-built, cloud-native databases. Don't limit yourself to the same old-guard database that you were using on-premises. Instead, modernize your applications and choose the databases that best suit your applications' workflow requirements. For more information, see Migration strategy for relational databases and SQL Server database migration strategies

There are three main migration and modernization paths that you can consider for your SQL Server workloads. For more information, see Migration and modernization strategies for your SQL Server workloads on AWS.

What are the available migration methods?

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To learn about the common methods that you can use to migrate your SQL Server databases to AWS, see SQL Server database migration methods.

Review the following resources and then use the guidance provided according to your use case:

Migrate end-of-support Microsoft SQL Server databases to Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for SQL Server confidently

Migrate on-premises SQL Server to Amazon RDS Custom for SQL Server using native backup and restore and Amazon S3

Migrating your on-premises SQL Server Windows workloads to Amazon EC2 Linux

Migrating SQL Server to Amazon RDS using native backup and restore

Migrating your SQL Server database to Amazon RDS for SQL Server using AWS DMS

Automate on-premises or Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) SQL Server to Amazon RDS for SQL Server migration using custom log shipping

Migrating to Amazon RDS for SQL Server using transactional replication with native backup and restore: Part 3

Migrate TDE-enabled SQL Server databases to Amazon RDS for SQL Server

Migrating SQL Server databases from Microsoft Azure to AWS in near real time with CloudBasic

Migrate SQL Server databases from an Azure SQL database to Amazon RDS for SQL Server using bacpac method

Migrate a multi-TB SQL Server database to Amazon RDS Custom for SQL Server using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)

Migrate an on-premises SQL Server standalone workload to Amazon RDS Custom for SQL Server using domain-independent, Always On availability groups

Using AWS Migration Hub Orchestrator to simplify and accelerate Microsoft SQL Server migrations to AWS

Simplify your Microsoft SQL Server high availability deployments using Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

For guidance when performing an in-depth assessment of Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition databases and converting them to SQL Server Standard edition during a migration to Amazon RDS, see Evaluate downgrading Microsoft SQL Server from Enterprise edition to Standard edition on AWS.

To use a distributed availability group to migrate your on-premises SQL Server databases that are part of an existing availability group to SQL Server with availability groups that are set up on Amazon EC2, see Migrate SQL Server to AWS using distributed availability groups. Also see How to set up disaster recovery for SQL Server Always On Availability Groups using AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery.

To learn how to deploy your SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages on Amazon RDS, watch this video: To learn how to deploy your SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) models on Amazon RDS, watch this video: To learn how to deploy your SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports on Amazon RDS, watch this video: