🧠Knowledge Series #33: How do data migrations work?
Data migrations explained and how you can run them without the stress
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Hi product people 👋,
When a migration goes wrong, it can have pretty serious consequences. Retailer Target’s supply chain collapsed in 2013 due to errors in the data imported into their new SAP system. TSB Bank performed a migration in 2018 which went so badly that it locked 2 million customers out of their account and eventually led to the resignation of their CEO.Â
If you’ve ever worked on a project which involved moving from one platform to another, you’ve probably heard the phrase data migration a lot. But unless you’ve had hands-on experience of running them, you might not know what exactly is involved during the process.
And that’s why in this Knowledge Series, we’ll explain what migrations are and how data migrations work, with a full end to end mock example you can use the next time you work on them.
Coming up:
The different types of migrations explored
What is a data migration and when might you need one?
How data migrations work - an end to end example using Amazon AWS Cognito
What a data migration script might include
How to perform a migration without the stressÂ
The different types of migrations explored
In a tech context, migrations can actually refer to many different things but irrespective of the type of migration, what we’re essentially talking about is moving something from state A to state B.
In this Knowledge Series we’re going to focus on data migrations but some of the other related types of migration include:
Migrating to the cloud. For companies with physical servers, moving to serverless means migrating away from physical servers onto cloud hosted infrastructure (for more on serverless, you can check out our previous Knowledge Series on the topic). One of the main reasons companies migrate to the cloud is to save time on managing physical infrastructure.
Software upgrades. This involves moving from an older version of an application onto a newer version of the same software. This is typically more straightforward than other types of migrations but can still be problematic.
Platform / product migrations. This involves moving from one product or platform onto another and is one of the most common types of migrations that product teams might get deeply involved with. This can include products like CRMs where you may (for whatever reason) have decided to use a different vendor. The switching costs associated with this can sometimes be offset by the vendor you're moving to who is willing to help with that process.