Migrate SQL Server Database to AWS (RDS) or Azure using SSIS

 

Migrate SQL Server Database to AWS (RDS) or Azure using SSIS

If backup and restore is not an option to migrate or copy the whole database which is not an option, specially to migrate managed database services like AWS RDS /Azure or any Environment which has restrictions to restore backups needs Import/Export mechanisms to migrate the data. The top 2 ways to migrate data is through either SSIS (Export Wizard) or BCP. choosing the one from these two depends on whether it has direct access to the destination server (SSIS) or disconnected server (BCP) which needs to copy the data dump and insert the data at the destination. Both these techniques are very familiar to most of the DBAs, here I am highlighting the problems faced with working with these 2 techniques (SSIS/BCP) SSIS Export Wizard: Export Wizard has an option to save an SSIS package without executing. which is pretty good feature, but it has some limitations which needs manual intervention. 1. Identity Insert should be ON for all the tables which has identity key property, Its very tedious manual process to identify which tables has this property and manually enable them in each data flow. 2. Keep Nulls should be on the tables with default values. E.g.: if the table, column which allows nulls and has a date data type with default value as getdate()  then after exporting the data it inserts the date values instead nulls, unless the SSIS dataflow destination property option FastLoadKeepNulls is checked 3. fast load options are not set by default; it has to be set manually for the property sFastLoadOptionsBatchCommit  4. TABLOCK which is not enable by default 5. ROWS_PER_BATCH is not configured by default Above 5 settings have to be done manually.  Without these the package would fail or perform slowly Think about a situation where you need to export 100 tables with millions of rows. Below VbScript will create a new SSIS package with all the above options.  How it works: It replaces specific string in the package to enable the above configuration values in the source code. Note: This has been tested on SQL Server 2008 EE. If this doesn’t work in your environment, then modify the key strings as per the release. Steps: 1. Run the Export export data wizard and save the package to C:\TEMP\northwind.dtsx 2. copy the below vbscript code to a file in C:\TEMP\SetSSIS.VBS  3. Edit the Vbscript, Line 5 "filePath = "<ssis file path>" 4. run the vb script 5. it creates a new package with new name as <PKG_NAME>.NEW 6. open the package in BIDS 7. run the package Before After Const ForReading=1 Const ForWriting=2 Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") folder = ".\" filePath = "C:\temp\northwind.dtsx" dim NewrowsPerBatchString NewrowsPerBatchString = "TABLOCK,ROWS_PER_BATCH = 50000</property>" Set myFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(filePath, ForReading, True) Set myTemp= objFSO.OpenTextFile(filePath & ".new.dtsx", ForWriting, True) dim sIdentity sIdentity =   "name=""FastLoadKeepIdentity"" dataType=""System.Boolean"" state=""default"" isArray=""false"" description=""Indicates whether the values supplied for identity columns will be copied to the destination. If false, values for identity columns will be auto-generated at the destination. Applies only if fast load is turned on."" typeConverter="""" UITypeEditor="""" containsID=""false"" expressionType=""None"">false</property>" sKeepNulls = "name=""FastLoadKeepNulls"" dataType=""System.Boolean"" state=""default"" isArray=""false"" description=""Indicates whether the columns containing null will have null inserted in the destination. If false, columns containing null will have their default values inserted at the destinaton. Applies only if fast load is turned on."" typeConverter="""" UITypeEditor="""" containsID=""false"" expressionType=""None"">false</property>" sFastLoadOptionsBatchCommit = "name=""FastLoadMaxInsertCommitSize"" dataType=""System.Int32"" state=""default"" isArray=""false"" description=""Specifies when commits are issued during data insertion.  A value of 0 specifies that one commit will be issued at the end of data insertion.  Applies only if fast load is turned on."" typeConverter="""" UITypeEditor="""" containsID=""false"" expressionType=""None"">0</property>" sFastLoadOptions = "name=""FastLoadOptions"" dataType=""System.String"" state=""default"" isArray=""false"" description=""Specifies options to be used with fast load.  Applies only if fast load is turned on."" typeConverter="""" UITypeEditor="""" containsID=""false"" expressionType=""None"">" dim x Do While Not myFile.AtEndofStream myLine = myFile.ReadLine If InStr(myLine, sIdentity) Then           myLine=Replace(myLine,"expressionType=""None"">false</property>", "expressionType=""None"">true</property>") End If If InStr(myLine, sKeepNulls) Then           myLine=Replace(myLine,"expressionType=""None"">false</property>", "expressionType=""None"">true</property>") End If If InStr(myLine, sFastLoadOptionsBatchCommit) Then           myLine=Replace(myLine,"expressionType=""None"">0</property>","expressionType=""None"">50000</property>") End If If InStr(myLine, sFastLoadOptions) Then           myLine=Replace(myLine,"expressionType=""None"">","expressionType=""None"">"&NewrowsPerBatchString)   x=instrrev(myLine,NewrowsPerBatchString )           myLine=left(myLine,x+(len(NewrowsPerBatchString)-1)) End If myTemp.WriteLine myLine x="" Loop myFile.Close myTemp.Close 'objFSO.DeleteFile(filePath) 'objFSO.MoveFile filePath&".tmp", filePath BCP Check the below link which is using BCP to migrate the Data.