Pulse Database Migration from SQL Server on Prem to AWS RDS

Hi

One of our client is setting up Pulse on their new AWS PA Server and using AWS RDS as the Pulse DB.

However, they currently have 8GB worth of Pulse historical database in their current on Prem SQL Server.

What is the best way to migrate the data from SQL Server on Prem to AWS RDS?

Apparently a traditional restore database file approach isn’t possible on RDS and importing via script isn’t working too well for a 8GB database.

Hi @Sb5,

I believe your question goes beyond the Pulse as product itself and rather , I suggest to follow Amazon’s procedure, this has its variants by database, but according to Amazon’s documentation [1] and [2] is completely possible.

Now, once the database is on SQL Server RDS[1] the only thing to do from the Pulse side is to configure the SQL server connection in the Pulse.cfg.

[1] Import data into an Amazon RDS DB instance (browsed on Sept, 2019)

[2] Importing and exporting SQL Server databases using native backup and restore - Amazon Relational Database Service (browsed on Sept, 2019)

Best Regards,

Erik

Thanks @ecarmona

I will pass on this info to the client’s Server Engineering team.

Hi @ecarmona

How about trimming the Pulse database? Are there any tools that come along as part of the install to do that?

Or would this just be reliant on the client’s DBA?

Thanks

Hi @Sb5

For non default Pulse databases, I believe yes - one would be reliant on the client DBA.
(for the default H2 database one can access it via the browser with the right user credentials)

Can you maybe give some more detail on what the client wants to target?
E.g. does the client want to remove data prior to a specific point in time?
Or maybe target specific entities/years etc.?

Thanks

Hi @Sb5,

complementing @gpool 's answer, you can also look at the maintenance Job:

Regards,

Erik

HI @ecarmona

Just want to clarify. This maintenance job is only available if we were to use the default H2 database right?

Hi @Sb5,

No, the maintenance job is for both databases, SQL server and H2.

Regards,

Erik

Also ran into the same issue with an on-prem SQL Server migration to Amazon RDS. Per AWS documentation, the recommended approach is using the native backup and restore functionality, but Pulse does not work after migrating the database to RDS. Pulse throws all sorts of connection errors and cannot insert into the database, even though we’ve triple checked the connection settings in the pulse.cfg. I suspect it has something to do specifically with RDS and how the backup and restore functionality works because doing so locally works just fine.

Our client is not as concerned with the historical pulse data so much as they are with the configurations like users/groups, alerts, etc., so we have proposed using the import/export method to selectively restore the tables that house Pulse configurations. We’re hoping this will method will work since we’re fresh out of ideas :slight_smile:

Hi all,

Please note that we do not support using Amazon RDS for the Pulse database. You need to install a regular SQL Server or use the embedded H2 database.

1 Like

Hi, Is there an option to transfer back Pulse data (users/groups), configurations to default H2 database from SQL Server ? We are in the same situation where we are trying to consolidate RDS SQL Server instances in AWS and found out that restoring the tables to new db is causing all kind of connection issues. We tried restoring selective tables that has configuration details, but ran into referential integrity issues.

Hi @naveen.chandra,

No, there isn’t an easy way to go back to H2 but you could use SQL Server or SQL Server Express. We recommend the full SQL Server but some customers have used the Express version which is free but has limitations.