Aging Hardware Nearing End of Support
The on-premises Oracle servers were approaching end-of-life, and the network faced a six-figure capital refresh to keep running the same architecture for another hardware cycle.
Case Study · Oracle Cloud Migration
A sub-two-minute cutover for a 24/7 healthcare database
A regional healthcare network needed to exit an aging on-premises Oracle data center footprint without disrupting a database that clinical and scheduling systems depend on around the clock. OptiSol used GoldenGate-based replication to move the database to AWS RDS for Oracle with a cutover window measured in minutes, not hours.
<2 Min
Cutover downtime window
9 Wks
Assessment to go-live
Zero
Data-loss incidents at cutover
The Challenge
A Hardware Refresh the Network Couldn't Justify — And Couldn't Avoid
The database sat behind patient scheduling, clinical documentation, and billing systems that could not tolerate an extended outage, which made every prior modernization attempt stall at the planning stage.
No Tolerance for a Multi-Hour Outage
Clinical documentation and scheduling systems that depend on the database run continuously, so any migration approach requiring a traditional overnight or weekend outage window was a non-starter.
Seasonal Load Spikes Outgrowing Fixed Capacity
Enrollment periods and seasonal patient volume drove workload spikes the fixed on-premises hardware was increasingly unable to absorb without manual intervention.
The Approach
GoldenGate-Based Replication Made the Cutover a Formality
Rather than a big-bang migration, OptiSol kept the AWS RDS for Oracle target in continuous sync with the on-premises source for weeks before cutover — so the actual switch was a brief, well-rehearsed final step.
Cloud Readiness Assessment
OptiSol inventoried the Oracle estate — schemas, jobs, linked objects, and dependencies — and captured AWR baselines to establish exactly what "normal" performance looked like before any migration work began.
Migration Architecture Design
Compute and storage for AWS RDS for Oracle were sized directly against the AWR-observed workload, and a Multi-AZ configuration was designed to give the network built-in high availability it didn't have on-premises.
Staged Migration With GoldenGate Replication
An initial RMAN-based load populated the RDS target, after which Oracle GoldenGate captured and applied ongoing changes in near real time — keeping the cloud target continuously current with the live on-premises database for the following weeks.
Rehearsed Cutover & Cloud-Native Cutback Plan
The cutover sequence — freeze writes, let GoldenGate apply the final lag, redirect application connections — was rehearsed twice against a staging copy before the production cutover window, with a tested fallback to reverse the replication direction if needed.
30-Day Post-Migration Validation
Performance was tracked against the on-premises AWR baseline for 30 days post-cutover, with CloudWatch alarms tied to the same thresholds the network used to judge on-premises health.
The Impact
The Business Impact
- On-premises Oracle hardware refresh avoided entirely
- Production cutover completed in under two minutes of write downtime
- Zero data-loss incidents recorded during cutover or the post-migration window
- Multi-AZ high availability in place for the first time on this database
- 30-day AWR-baseline performance validation completed with no unresolved regressions
- Seasonal enrollment-period load now absorbed through elastic RDS scaling
"The cutover was almost anticlimactic — which is exactly what we wanted for a database this critical. All the real work happened in the weeks of replication before it." — OptiSol Oracle Engineering Lead
