Best practices - AWS Prescriptive Guidance

Best practices

Follow these general best practices when migrating your SSIS jobs to AWS:

  • If you’re migrating your databases to an AWS managed service such as Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), descope maintenance tasks (such as backup, restore, update statistics, or check database integrity) that are not applicable or managed by AWS.

  • Build reusable scripts and methods to standardize development and reduce effort.

  • Always test migrated jobs on infrastructure and data volumes that match production resources.

  • SSIS packages are in XML format. Build XML parser utilities to automate migration activities where possible. The following example shows an SSIS package in XML format.

    SSIS package in XML format

    The following illustration shows a sample XML parser.

    Sample XML parser for SSIS jobs

  • Use checksums and hash values to test correctness and completeness.

  • If you’re building custom libraries, implement threading to run tasks in parallel. This improves job performance.

  • Decommission the existing environment only after all jobs are stable on AWS for a period of time.

  • Use Amazon CloudWatch for logging, to reduce logging customization efforts.

  • Use Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) to replace custom tasks for sending notifications. Use Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) to replace custom email tasks.