DBS-C01 Management and Operations Practice Question
A company is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. During the migration, they need to ensure minimal downtime. Which AWS service should be used for the migration?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse AWS DMS with general-purpose data transfer services like DataSync or S3 Transfer Acceleration, not realizing that DMS is the only service that supports live database replication with transaction consistency and minimal downtime.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
AWS Database Migration Service
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) is the correct choice because it is specifically designed for migrating databases to AWS with minimal downtime. DMS supports homogeneous migrations (e.g., Oracle to Oracle) and heterogeneous migrations (e.g., Oracle to Amazon Aurora), and it can perform continuous replication using change data capture (CDC) to keep the source and target databases synchronized during the migration, allowing you to cut over with only a brief pause.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
AWS Database Migration Service
Why this is correct
DMS supports homogeneous and heterogeneous migrations with minimal downtime.
- ✗
AWS DataSync
Why it's wrong here
DataSync is for file-based data transfer, not databases.
- ✗
Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration
Why it's wrong here
Used for faster S3 uploads, not database migration.
- ✗
AWS Server Migration Service
Why it's wrong here
AWS Server Migration Service automates the replication of entire virtual machines from on-premises hypervisors to AWS, but it cannot handle database schema conversion or continuous change data capture from an Oracle database. The migration requires a tool that supports ongoing replication of transactional changes to minimise downtime, which Server Migration Service lacks. It is tempting because it is designed for lift-and-shift server migrations, and would be correct for moving a full VM workload to Amazon EC2 without database-specific synchronisation.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DBS-C01 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DBS-C01 exam.