Question

A retail company is planning to migrate a 12 TB on-premises PostgreSQL 11 database to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The migration team has a strict requirement that the production database experience no more than 15 minutes of downtime during cutover. The database has a sustained write rate of roughly 200 transactions per second, and a dedicated 1 Gbps AWS Direct Connect link is available. The team wants to validate that the target data matches the source before cutover. Which approach best meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS DMS with a full-load-plus-CDC task to perform the initial bulk load and continuously replicate ongoing changes, enable DMS data validation, then cut over during a short window once the target is in sync.

Answer

Take a native pg_dump of the source, transfer the dump file over Direct Connect, restore it with pg_restore into RDS, and schedule the migration during a maintenance window when writes are paused.

Answer

Use AWS DataSync to copy the database data files to Amazon S3, then load them into RDS for PostgreSQL using the aws_s3 extension after stopping the application.

Answer

Create an RDS read replica of the on-premises database over Direct Connect, allow it to catch up, then promote it to a standalone instance during cutover.