AWS NYC Summit July

Join me at the the AWS NYC Summit as I co-present the Cloud migration session from 2-3 PM this Thursday July 9th.

http://aws.amazon.com/summits/new-york/sessions/

Cloud Migration, Application Modernization and Security for Partners

As AWS continues to expand, enterprise customers are increasingly looking to our partner ecosystem to assist in migrating their workloads to the cloud. This session describes the challenges, lessons learned, and best practices for large-scale application migrations. We will use real examples from our consulting partners and AWS Professional Services to illustrate how to move workloads to the cloud while modernizing the associated applications to take advantage of the unique benefits of AWS. We will also dive into how to use an array of AWS services and features to improve customers' security posture as they migrate and once they are up and running in the cloud.

Level: Introductory

AWS SF Summit 2015 migration sessions

Here are the AWS SF 2015 Summit decks and video replays:
1. AWS Cloud Transformation Framework:
http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/application-portfolio-migration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FjCMWlskMU&index=11&list=PLhr1KZpdzukeD0iBeDI9WqZLYtuaFaaGc
The CAF white paper serves as the foundation for this session: http://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/aws_cloud_adoption_framework.pdf 

2. AWS application modernization with a focus on security:
http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/cloud-migration-application-modernization-and-security-for-partners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpeV4OqB6Us&index=26&list=PLhr1KZpdzukeD0iBeDI9WqZLYtuaFaaGc

3. AWS Partner session:
http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/implementing-service-oriented-architecture

All sessions can be found on Slideshare and Youtube here:
http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/tag/2015sfsummit?adbsc=awssummit2015_20150411_43646046&adbid=586959582653648896&adbpl=tw&adbpr=66780587
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhr1KZpdzukeD0iBeDI9WqZLYtuaFaaGc&adbsc=awssummit2015_20150411_43648896&adbid=586713471154159616&adbpl=tw&adbpr=66780587

Cloud and security

Interesting article on cloud and security:
http://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/cloud-security-to-reap-$15-billion-by-2015/d/d-id/1093553?

Peoplesoft on AWS

Here are some case studies and materials for running Oracle Peoplesoft on AWS:

1. Select Staffing presented along with AWS and DLZP. http://www.slideshare.net/tomlaszewski/dat202-using-amazon-rds-to-power-enterprise-applications-1-0

2. Data migration from on premise Oracle to Oracle AWS RDS (same technique can be used for EC2, in fact, with EC2 may be easier to just do an RMAN dump, FTP, SCP or Tsunami to transfer to AWS,) and restore using RMAN on EC2). http://www.slideshare.net/tomlaszewski/advanced-data-migration-techniques-for-amazon-rds

3. Best practices for Peoplesoft on premise to AWS done at Oracle OpenWorld last year by DLZP: http://www.slideshare.net/tomlaszewski/oracle-peoplesoft-on-aws

4. Test drive:http://aws.amazon.com/testdrive/oracle/

On premise mapped to AWS

A question that often comes up when companies are migrating Oracle workloads to AWS is: "How do my on premise IT architecture components map to AWS?".  Here are some of the most common components mapping from on premise to AWS:

Moving and migrating data from on premise to AWS using Attunity CloudBeam

Here is some interesting information regarding using a solution like Attunity CloudBeam to move and migrate Oracle databases from on premise to AWS:

• Recognizing the importance of speed, Attunity has introduced Quality of Service options ranging between 200Mbps to 1Gbps.
• 12 TB per day data delivery 
• Attunity has published transfer rates, useful for benchmarking and planning (http://www.attunitycloudbeam.com/performance/performance-details)

Disaster Recovery Site on AWS - Minimal Cost Maximum Efficiency

This session has a demonstration of how to configure a DR solution on AWS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01hSWAOJGLY

Loading data from on premise Oracle Database to Oracle RDS using RMAN

An RMAN backupset can be loaded directly into RDS. However, you can still use RMAN as a mechanism to move an Oracle database from on premise to RDS.

First, move the data RMAN dump using Tsunami, Aspera, Attunity Cloudbeam, or stand protocols like FTP(s) or HTTP(s) which will be slower. More on moving data from on premise to AWS here: http://cloudconclave.blogspot.com/2013/04/on-premise-application-replication-and.html
OR
You can use Oracle Secure Backup to dump the database directly to S3.

Then load the data into using an Oracle Database instance running on EC2 using RMAN (if RMAN dump on EBS volumes) or Oracle Secure Backup if in S3.

You then load the data into RDS from the EC2 instance using one of the these options:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/Oracle.Procedural.Importing.html

You may ask...why did you go through all this trouble of setting an Oracle database on EC2 when I can simply export/dump the data from the on premise Oracle DB and move to EBS or S3 and then load into RDS.  It is because an RMAN dump is much faster on the on premise side and RMAN produces a more compressed and portable database format to move across the internet to AWS.

You can also use this process to load the data using data pump and Oracle Managed Files:
http://cloudconclave.blogspot.com/2013/10/process-to-load-oracle-data-from-on.html

Native replication for replicating data into and out of RDS has announced in Sept 2012 and details can be found here:
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/09/migrate-mysql-data-to-amazon-rds-and-back.html
This is not yet available for Oracle RDS.

How to support on premise and EBS volume back up to S3 with one tool

There are many solutions to move data (backup, replicate, and synchronize) between your on premise environment and AWS S3. However, when you are looking for a solution that can backup your AWS EBS volumes to S3 there are not as many.  There are some vendor specific products (i.e. Oracle Secure Backup) but nothing that natively (at a file system or raw partition level) backups up EBS to S3.  Such a solution, would also have the added value of using the same tool / product to back up on premise disk and EBS volumes using the same method.  One company that offers such a solution is Ctera (http://www.ctera.com).  

Using AMIs on premise

AMIs provide a great way to package your software deployment.  Once this pre-configured 'template' is created some IT folks may want to use it on premise.  The solution to that does this is:
http://www.eucalyptus.com
Details can be found here:
http://www.eucalyptus.com/eucalyptus-cloud/iaas/concepts
Before the AMI can be used on premise, it must be converted to an EMI:
AMI--->EMI before using on premise.

Eucalyptus has support for EC2 instances, EBS, S3, and IAM.  It also has API compatibility.  They just announced support for ELB, Auto Scaling, and CloudWatch.

They are an AWS partner:https://aws.amazon.com/solution-providers/isv/eucalyptus

Importing on premise Oracle Database into AWS RDS

There is an article here but does not get into specifics on the performance of each option. http://aws.amazon.com/articles/4173109646282306

Oracle data pump is one of the fastest ways to move data between Oracle databases.  However, the approach shown in the above article uses database links which can be very slow.  A more performant method would be to use data pump file mode. Unfortunately, AWS Oracle RDS does not off access to the OS.  There is a workaround to this by using a little known feature of the Oracle database called Oracle Managed File System

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B13789_01/server.101/b10739/omf.htm#i1006122

Oracle RDS has access to this Oracle Managed File (OMF) system. Once the file exported from the on premise database and moved to the Oracle RDS OMF you can use the  UTL_FILE capability in the database and import a file into the RDS instance, and then do impdb (data pump import) from there.

Things to keep in mind:

1.       Since the file sits on the Oracle managed file system, it consumes the space allocated for the database. So you will need to make sure you allocate enough space for the instance

2.       Once you do the impdb operation, you can delete the file but till then it will consume space on the instance

3.       File sizes will need to be less than 400-500 GB since the largest instance currently is 1 TB, and you will need space for both the file as well as the database

4.       As you do the import, you will consume IOPS for reading the dump file and then writing to the database.

Application on premise and database on AWS

It is possible to run an application on premise and run your Oracle database on AWS on EC2 or RDS.  However, in in this scenario, the network latency is typically to high and network bandwidth to limited to support most database systems.  This is where AWS Direct Connect comes in. AWS Direct Connect provides speeds of 1 GBPS to 10GBPS where as a typical internet connection speed of 100MBPS (100Base-T connection) would be significantly slower.  Keep in mind that an internal dedicated network from application server box to database server which would be 10 GBPS to 100 GBPS. If the application server and database server on on the same box there is no network latency. There are customers that run Oracle applications on EC2 and Oracle RAC databases in a co location facility using Direct Connect.

AWS data movement and replication product

Attunity CloudBeam offers data movement and replication from on premise and AWS, and between AWS regions;
https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00B5PB8IM/ref=srh_res_product_title?ie=UTF8&sr=0-2&qid=1359126283717