AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional — Question 851

A Solutions Architect is migrating a 10 TB PostgreSQL database to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The company's internet link is 50 MB with a VPN in the
Amazon VPC, and the Solutions Architect needs to migrate the data and synchronize the changes before the cutover. The cutover must take place within an 8-day period.
What is the LEAST complex method of migrating the database securely and reliably?

Answer options

• A. Order an AWS Snowball device and copy the database using the AWS DMS. When the database is available in Amazon S3, use AWS DMS to load it to Amazon RDS, and configure a job to synchronize changes before the cutover.
• B. Create an AWS DMS job to continuously replicate the data from on premises to AWS. Cutover to Amazon RDS after the data is synchronized.
• C. Order an AWS Snowball device and copy a database dump to the device. After the data has been copied to Amazon S3, import it to the Amazon RDS instance. Set up log shipping over a VPN to synchronize changes before the cutover.
• D. Order an AWS Snowball device and copy the database by using the AWS Schema Conversion Tool. When the data is available in Amazon S3, use AWS DMS to load it to Amazon RDS, and configure a job to synchronize changes before the cutover.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

Migrating a 10 TB database over a 50 Mbps network connection would take more than 20 days, which exceeds the 8-day window, making an offline migration via AWS Snowball necessary for the initial bulk load. Using AWS DMS with Snowball allows for seamless data loading into S3 and RDS, followed by change data capture (CDC) replication over the VPN to synchronize incremental changes. The AWS Schema Conversion Tool (SCT) is unnecessary because this is a homogeneous PostgreSQL-to-PostgreSQL migration, and manual log shipping is significantly more complex than using AWS DMS.