Migration Life Cycle of a Target Cloud Database: Discovery Phase….

In the previous post, I mentioned five different steps in the migration life cycle of a target cloud database. These steps are,

1. Discovery
   
2. Analysis
   
3. Planning
   
4. Migration
   
5. Validation
   

Let’s look at the very first step- Discovery.

The discovery phase consists of collecting source database information such as:

• Database version
• Database size
• Operating system
• Endian-ness of the database
• Database links
• Database character set
• Data types used in the source database
• Business dependency: Applications may have monthly or quarterly releases and the migration must be completed before that. In such cases, you must select the faster approach for migration.
• Resourcing: Business dependency and resourcing go hand-in-hand. If the migration is critical and must be completed within a stipulated time, resources working on the cloud migration must be enhanced.

Let’s take an example of a sample database.

The following is some of the information you would collect during the discovery phase of an on-premises database, which needs to be migrated to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure DB VM System:

• Database version: 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.2.0.1.0 (64-bit Production)
• Database name: Pluggable database name – PDB1, container database name – ORCL
• Database size: 2 GB
• Operating system: Linux 3.8.13-26.2.1.el6uek.x86_64
• Endian-ness of the database: Little endian
• Database links: None
• Database priority: Development, non-critical
• Memory structure: SGA – 2.5 GB, PGA – 2 GB