11 Select a Method to Migrate Database Instances

Many cloud infrastructure environments rely on databases to support applications deployed on virtual machines. There are several options for migrating your Oracle Database Classic Cloud Service instances to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, depending on the type of database, the amount of downtime you can plan for, and the tools you have available.

Database Migration Options Covered In This Guide

This migration guide describes three different database migration options. The following table provides a summary of each one.

Database Migration Option	Description	Required Tools and Technologies	Typical Use Case
Migrate Databases Using the Migration Tools	The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic Database Backup Migration Tool creates a Recovery Manager (RMAN) backup of your Oracle Database Classic Cloud Service instances. RMAN backups are stored in the associated Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage Classic container. The migration tool automatically transfers the backup to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as a standalone backup. You can restore this standalone backup to a new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Database system.	Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Migration Tools Oracle Database Recovery Manager (RMAN)	This option is best suited for migrating database instances in your development and test environments. In this scenario, you can use the same migration tool that you used to migrate your infrastructure resources. The downtime depends upon the size of the database and the speed of the network.
Learn About Migrating a Database Cloud Service Deployment to a Virtual Machine Database System	With this migration option, you use Oracle Data Guard to migrate a single-instance database, created with Oracle Database Classic Cloud Service on a Compute Classic server, to an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Virtual Machine Database System.	Oracle Data Guard	Use this option if you are using applications that depend on Oracle Data Guard. Downtime is kept to a minimum and is equal to the time it takes for Oracle Data Guard to perform a switchover from the source database to the target (standby) database. This can vary, depending on the network speed and the load on the database at the time.
Learn About Migrating a Multi-Node Database Cloud Service Deployment to Virtual Machine Database System	This migration option also uses Oracle Data Guard, but it is designed to migrate a multi-node Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) database to a Virtual Machine Database System on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.	Oracle Data Guard	Use this option if you are using applications that depend on Oracle Data Guard. Downtime is kept to a minimum and is equal to the time it takes for Oracle Data Guard to perform a switchover from the source database to the target (standby) database. This can vary, depending on the network speed and the load on the database at the time.
Migrate New Data in Real Time from Oracle Database Classic to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure	This migration option is a real-time migration. The source is an Oracle database Classic instance and the target is an Oracle database system on a virtual machine on OCI. This migration method watches the source database and updates the target with every change that happens on the source. Every new insert, delete, or update that happens on the source will be reflected in the target database in real-time. For this method, there is no need to shutdown any of the databases. This method is applicable for Oracle databases 11g to 11g, 11g to 12c, and 12c to 12c.	Oracle Data Integration Platform Cloud	Use this migration option for the following scenarios: When you don't want to shut down your source production database. For real time migration of Oracle database 11g to 12c, which is more complicated with other migration methods. When your new database only requires a copy of your source database from a certain point of time that you choose. This time has to be after the time that you start the migration. The target database can be used for data analytics, to take the query load off your source database. It can also be used as a more current database, which doesn't include historical data from the source database. For a complete migration of the source database, including the historical data, use Oracle Data Pump or Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) to copy the initial load from source to the target first and perform this real-time migration after that.

Additional Database Migration Options

You can find additional options to migrate the database instances on the Oracle Help Center's Solution page.