Introduction: Data migration is a crucial step in modern data management, whether you’re moving data to the cloud, between cloud services, or within your on-premises environment. AWS, as a leading cloud service provider, offers several tools to simplify data migration tasks. In this blog post, we will compare two popular AWS services for data migration: AWS Glue and AWS DataSync.
AWS Glue: The ETL Powerhouse
AWS Glue is a serverless data integration service that makes it easier to discover, prepare, move, and integrate data from multiple sources for analytics, machine learning (ML), and application development. AWS Glue is a fully managed extract, transform, and load (ETL) service designed for data preparation and transformation. It offers the following key features:
1. Data Catalog: AWS Glue includes a centralized metadata repository, making it easier to discover and manage your data assets.
2. ETL Automation: Glue automates much of the ETL process, reducing the need for manual coding and accelerating data preparation.
3. Flexibility: It supports various data sources, including Amazon S3, RDS, Redshift, and more, making it suitable for diverse data migration scenarios.
4. Serverless: Glue is serverless, meaning you don’t need to manage infrastructure, and you only pay for the resources you consume. When should I go with AWS Glue ?
1. Simplify ETL pipeline development : Remove infrastructure management with automatic provisioning and worker management, and consolidate all your data integration needs into a single service.
2. Discover data efficiently : Quickly identify data across AWS, on premises, and other clouds, and then make it instantly available for querying and transforming.
3. Interactively explore, experiment on, and process data : Using AWS Glue interactive sessions, data engineers can interactively explore and prepare data using the integrated development environment (IDE) or notebook of their choice.
4. Support various processing frameworks and workloads : More easily support various data processing frameworks, such as ETL and ELT, and various workloads, including batch, micro-batch, and streaming.
AWS DataSync: Data Transfer Simplified
AWS DataSync is a secure, online service that automates and accelerates moving data between on premises and AWS Storage services.
DataSync can copy data between Network File System (NFS) shares, Server Message Block (SMB) shares, Hadoop Distributed File Systems (HDFS), self-managed object storage, AWS Snowcone, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets, Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file systems, Amazon FSx for Windows File Server file systems, Amazon FSx for Lustre file systems, Amazon FSz for OpenZFS file systems, and Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file systems.
AWS DataSync, on the other hand, focuses on simplifying data transfer tasks between on-premises and cloud environments. Key features include:
1. High-Speed Transfer: DataSync offers accelerated data transfer to AWS, optimizing bandwidth usage for efficient migration.
2. Support for On-Premises: It is designed for seamless integration with on-premises data sources, making it a go-to choice for hybrid cloud deployments.
3. Encryption: DataSync ensures secure data transfer with built-in encryption mechanisms.
4. Scheduling: You can schedule data transfer tasks and monitor progress with ease.
When should I go with AWS DataSync ?
1. Migrate your data: Quickly move file and object data to AWS. Your data is secure with in-flight encryption and end-to-end data validation.
2. Protect your data: Securely replicate your data into cost-efficient AWS storage services, including any Amazon S3 storage class.
3. Archive your cold data : Reduce on-premises storage costs by moving data directly to Amazon S3 Glacier archive storage classes.
4. Manage your hybrid data workflows : Seamlessly move data between on-premises systems and AWS to accelerate your critical hybrid workflows.
Comparisons of key aspects of AWS DataSync and AWS Glue :
Below compare aspects of each application in 4 categories:
1. Key features
2. Supported data sources
3. Data transformation
4. Pricing
AWS Glue vs. AWS DataSync – Key Features :
Glue provides more of an end-to-end data pipeline coverage than Data Pipeline, which is focused predominantly on designing data workflow. Also, AWS is continuing to enhance Glue; development on Data Pipeline appears to be stalled