A cloud engineer needs to perform a database migration. The database has a restricted SLA and cannot be offline for more than ten minutes per month. The database stores 800GB of data, and the network

Shipping an external device to the CSP avoids network bandwidth limits but introduces transit time of days or weeks, during which the source database must remain authoritative, and the final cutover still risks data loss or extended downtime.

Creating a replica database and continuously synchronizing data to the new instance allows the migration to happen while the source database remains online and serving traffic. Once the replica is fully synchronized, the cutover - switching connections to the new instance - can be completed in seconds or a few minutes, well within the 10-minute SLA window. This technique, known as a live migration or online migration, is the standard approach when downtime constraints cannot accommodate a full data transfer window.

Using a third-party backup and restore tool would require the database to be taken offline for the full duration of the restore operation, which at 800 GB over 100 MBps would far exceed the 10-minute SLA.

The database import/export method requires exporting the full dataset, transferring it, and then importing it - a process that would take over two hours at 100 MBps and violates the 10-minute downtime constraint.