Many enterprises deploy applications using Azure Database for PostgreSQL Single Server, a fully managed Postgres database service, that is best suited for minimal customizations of your database. In November 2021, we announced that the next generation of the Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Flexible Server, was generally available. Since then, customers have been using methods like dump/restore, Azure Database Migration Service (DMS), and custom scripts to migrate their databases from Single to Flexible Server.
If you are a user of Azure Database for PostgreSQL Single Server, and looking to migrate to Postgres Flexible Server, At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. It’s this mission that drives our firm commitment to collaborate and contribute to the Postgres community and invest in bringing the best migration experience to all our Postgres users.
If you are not familiar with Flexible server, it provides you with the simplicity of a managed database service together with maximum flexibility over your database, and built-in cost-optimization controls. Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server is the next generation Postgres service in Azure and offers a robust value proposition and benefits including:
Learn more about why Flexible Server is the top destination for Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Now, let’s go over some of the nuances of migrating data from Single to Flexible Server.
Single Server and Flexible Server run on different OS platforms (Windows vs Linux) with different physical layouts (Basic/ 4TB/16TB storage Vs Managed disk), and different collation. Flexible Server supports PostgreSQL DB versions 11 and above. If you are using PG 10 and below on Single Server (those are retired, by the way), you must make sure your application is compatible with higher versions. These challenges prohibit us from making a simple physical copy of the data. Only a logical data copy, such as dump/restore (offline mode), or logical decoding (online mode) can be performed.
While the offline mode of migration is simple, many customers prefer an online migration experience that keeps your source PostgreSQL server up and operational until the cutover, however, there is a lengthy checklist of things to be aware of during this process. These steps include
Here is where the Single to Flexible migration tool comes into help to make the migration experience simpler for you.
This migration tool is tailormade to alleviate the pain of migrating the PostgreSQL schema and data from Single to Flexible Server. This tool offers a seamless migration experience, while abstracting the migration complexities under the hood. This tool is targeted for less than 1 TiB database size. This migration tool automates the majority of the migration steps, allowing you to focus on minor administration and pre-requisite tasks.
You can either use the Azure portal or Azure CLI to perform online or offline migrations.
For a detailed comparison, see this documentation.
Figure 1: Block diagram to show the migration feature steps and processes
This is a very critical step. Some of the steps in the planning phase include:
Once you have the plan in place, take care of few pre-requisites. For example
Now that you have taken care of pre-requisites, you can invoke migration using the Azure Portal or Azure CLI. Create one or more migration tasks using Azure portal or Azure CLI. High-level steps include
Following the invocation of the migration, the source and the target server and details are validated before initiating the migration infrastructure using Azure DMS, copying of schema, perform dump/restore steps, and if doing online then continue with CDC.
Once the data is available in the target Flexible PostgreSQL server, perform post-migration tasks including copying of roles, recreating large objects and copying of settings such as server parameters, firewall rules, monitoring alerts, and tags to the target Flexible server.
You can find a list of limitations in this documentation.
We’re thankful to our many customers who have evaluated the managed migration tooling and trusted us with migrating their business-critical applications to Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server. Customers appreciate the migration tool’s ease of use, features, and functionality to migrate from different Single Server configurations. Below are comments from a few of our customers who have migrated to the Flexible Server using the migration tool.
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“The Single to Flexible migration tool was critical for us to have a minimal downtime. While migrating 30 databases with 1.4TB of data across Postgres versions, we had both versions living side-by-side until cutover and with no impact to our business.” Mr. Oliver Fourel, Head of EV Platform, Allego |
Digitate is a leading software provider bringing agility, assurance, and resiliency to IT and business operations.
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“We had a humongous task of upgrading 50+ PostgreSQL 9.6 of database size 100GB+ to a higher version in Flexible Postgres server. Single to Flexible Server Migration tool provided a very seamless approach for migration. This tool is easy to use with minimum downtime.”
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