The Azure Database Migration Service is a fully managed service designed to enable seamless migrations from multiple database sources to Azure data platforms with minimal downtime (online migrations).

The Premium pricing tier, which previously named as “Business Critical SKU”, supports both offline and online migrations (also called "continuous migration") for workloads that require minimal downtime.  With online migrations using premium tier, businesses can migrate their databases to Azure while the databases continue to be operational. As a result, migrations can be completed with minimal downtime for critical applications, limiting the impact to service level availability and inconvenience to end customers.

The Premium pricing tier is now generally available and will be free to customers until February 28, 2019. Beginning March 1, 2019, DMS Premium pricing will be in effect.  Customers will be able to use DMS Premium 4-vCore free for 6 months from the DMS service creation date before incurring any charges.

The DMS Standard pricing tier supports offline (also called “one-time”) migrations. The Standard pricing tier, which offers 1-, 2-, and 4-vCore options, is generally available and free to customers.

For up-to-date info about Azure Database Migration Service pricing, see Azure Database Migration Service pricing.

Today, we are also very excited to announce general availability of online migration in Azure Database Migration Service (DMS) for the following migration scenarios.

Additional resources

Please refer to the resources below for online migrations

• Database Migration Guide
• Tutorial: Migrate SQL Server to Azure SQL Database online using DMS
• Tutorial: Migrate SQL Server to Azure SQL Database Managed Instance online using DMS
• Tutorial: Migrate PostgreSQL to Azure Database for PostgreSQL online using DMS
• Tutorial: Migrate MySQL to Azure Database for MySQL online using DMS
• Video: Online migrations to Azure SQL DB Managed Instance using Azure DMS
• Video: Online migrations to Azure SQL Database using Azure DMS
• Video: Migrate MySQL applications to Azure with minimal downtime using the Azure Database Migration Service
• Video: Assess on-premises SQL Server for a migration to Azure SQL Database Managed Instance using DMA
• Data Migration Assistant documentation
• How-to guide: Monitor online migration activity
• Azure Database Migration Service pricing
• Perform a SQL Server migration assessment with Data Migration Assistant
• Use Data Experimentation Assistant (DEA) to evaluate the target Azure SQL DB performance

Call to action

Sign in to the Azure portal and set up an instance of DMS  for free. We are constantly adding new database source/target pairs to DMS. Stay up-to-date on #AzureDMS news and follow us on Twitter (@Data_Migrations). Join the Azure Database Migration Service (DMS) Yammer group, and give us feedback via User Voice or email by contacting us at [email protected].  Also be sure to check out the Azure Database Migration Guide for information about how to migrate other source/target pairs. 

Raj Pochiraju
Principal Program Manager
Azure Data Engineering