Migrating Oracle E-Business

Suite on AWS
AWS Whitepaper

November 2020
Notices
Customers are responsible for making their own independent assessment of the
information in this document. This document: (a) is for informational purposes only, (b)
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between AWS and its customers.

© 2020 Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Contents
Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1
Why Should You Migrate Oracle E-Business Suite to AWS? .........................................1
Migration Methodology .....................................................................................................1
Migration Assessment and Planning ..................................................................................2
Migration Approaches .........................................................................................................4
Migration and Assessment Tools on AWS .........................................................................6
Architectures for Running Oracle E-Business Suite on AWS ............................................6
High Level Architecture for Running Oracle E-Business Suite on AWS ........................6
Oracle E-Business Suite Database Tier on Amazon EC2 ..............................................8
Migrating Oracle E-Business Suite to the Same Operating System ..................................9
Oracle E-Business Suite Migration using Rapid Clone and Smart Clone
(Homogeneous)................................................................................................................9
Database Migration Tools ..............................................................................................10
Migrating Oracle E-Business Suite Using CloudEndure ...............................................12
Migrating for Oracle E-Business Suite Across Operating Systems (Same Endian
Format) ..............................................................................................................................14
Migrating Oracle E-Business Suite Across Platforms (Different Endian Format)............15
Oracle E-Business Suite Cross-platform Migration Using Oracle Transportable
Tablespaces ...................................................................................................................15
Considerations for Running Oracle EBS on AWS ............................................................17
Sizing ..............................................................................................................................17
Throughput Requirements .............................................................................................18
Integrations with On-premises Applications ..................................................................18
Best Practices for Migrating Oracle E-Business Suite to AWS ........................................19
Proof of Concept ............................................................................................................19
Migrate vs. Upgrade .......................................................................................................19
Database Tier and Application Tier ...............................................................................19
 Identification of Read-only Workloads ...........................................................................19
AWS Native Services for Customizations .....................................................................20
SAPs ...............................................................................................................................20
Correct Stakeholders in the Discussion ........................................................................20
Conclusion .........................................................................................................................21
Contributors .......................................................................................................................21
Document Revisions..........................................................................................................21
Abstract
This whitepaper covers migration of Oracle E-Business Suite from on-premises to
Amazon Web Services (AWS). It covers various tools, best practices, and
considerations as customers migrate their Oracle E-Business Suite to AWS.

The intended audience includes Oracle E-Business Suite Database Administrators,

Head of IT, Architects, and Oracle E-Business Suite Implementation Consultants.
Amazon Web Services Migrating Oracle E-Business Suite on AWS

Introduction
Oracle E-Business Suite is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application used by
customers to run their financial, supply chain, manufacturing, and customer relationship
management (CRM) systems. Oracle E-Business Suite is often a critical workload in the
customer’s enterprise.

On their journey to the AWS Cloud, customers often lift-and-shift (also called “rehost”)
their Oracle E-Business Suite workloads to AWS. This is because ERP applications are
critical to any enterprise, and customers must have experience and expertise to migrate
these large applications to AWS. Some customers also look at re-platforming and
integrating with AWS native services.

AWS previously published a whitepaper called Overview of Running Oracle E-Business

Suite on AWS. Since then, many customers have migrated their workloads with the help
of AWS Solution Architects and AWS Partners. As we engaged with customers on
Oracle E-Business Suite migrations, we discovered various tools, approaches, and best
practices to help customers with their migration. In this whitepaper, we will cover various
aspects of migrating Oracle E-Business Suite to AWS.

Why Should You Migrate Oracle E-Business Suite to

AWS?
Migrating Oracle E-Business Suite to AWS enables you to leverage all the benefits of a
mature cloud platform, which reduces cost and improves high availability and
performance without big upfront investments. See “Benefits of Oracle E-Business Suite
on AWS” in the Overview of Running Oracle E-Business Suite on AWS whitepaper.

Migration Methodology
AWS has published various blogs and whitepapers to help you plan and execute your
migrations using migration methodology. See the five-phase migration process in the
Migrating to AWS: Best Practices and Strategies e-book for more details.

“With the five-phase migration process, you start with the least complex
application to learn how to migrate while learning more about the target platform,
and then build toward the more complex applications.” -Stephen Orban

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Figure 1 – The AWS five-phase migration process

Migration Assessment and Planning

Before Oracle E-Business Suite ERP can be migrated, consider the following:

Edge Applications – Application discovery tools such as AWS Application Discovery

Service or Migration Evaluator can provide useful information on applications and
systems interacting with Oracle E-Business Suite. You can analyze edge applications to
determine whether they should be migrated to the cloud first or later. This helps you
calculate the impact of Oracle E-Business Suite migration.

Current System Utilization – Check the current utilization of application servers,

database servers, and concurrent processing servers for Oracle E-Business Suite.
Utilization must be measured over a few weeks, observing the peak periods’ input
output (I/O) and throughput capacity required for the database. You can get this
information using monitoring tools already available in your organization. As part of the
migration exercise, discovery tools such as Application Discovery Service or Migration
Evaluator can also provide insight on current systems; utilization, and appropriate
instance sizing on AWS.

Target instance types – Provision a database instance for the I/O and throughput that
you observed on-premises to serve the real-time and batch workloads. See the Right
Sizing whitepaper.

Downtime – Plan for a downtime to cut over to the new production instance after
migration and setup is complete. To reduce the downtime, make use of the various tools
discussed in this section.

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Recovery Point Objective/Recovery Time Objective (RPO/RTO) – Your current

service-level agreements (SLAs) can be improved as you migrate to the cloud. We
suggest you run the Oracle E-Business Suite environment across multiple availability
zones from which you can to get 99.99% of availability. Based on customer needs, we
can also have multi-regional setup for disaster recovery (DR).

RAC vs. non-RAC – You might be running your current production databases
underlying Oracle E-Business Suite on Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC).
While RAC improves availability and allows more throughput, you can achieve a similar
level of performance and availability by using appropriate AWS services and other
Oracle high-availability tools such as Oracle Data Guard without implementing RAC on
AWS. When sizing database nodes on AWS, consider the aggregate CPU frequency,
memory, and throughput numbers from all instances of RAC. Running Oracle E-
Business Suite in a non-RAC deployment is discussed in the following sections.

Homogeneous vs heterogeneous migration – Depending on the source operating

system that you are migrating from, Oracle E-Business Suite migration is considered
homogeneous or heterogeneous. See Table 1 to determine your migration type. If the
Endian Format for source and target operating system (OSs) is same, migration of
Oracle E-Business Suite is considered to be homogeneous, otherwise it is considered
to be the heterogeneous migration.

Table 1 – Migration types

Recommended Target
Source OS Source Endian Format OS on AWS Target Endian Format

Windows Little Endian Windows Little Endian

Linux Little Endian Linux Little Endian

IBM AIX Big Endian Linux Little Endian

HP-UX Big Endian Linux Little Endian

Solaris SPARC Big Endian Linux Little Endian

Solaris x86 Little Endian Linux Little Endian

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To query the endianness of platforms, connect to the database as SYSDBA using

SQL*Plus and run the following command:

SQL> select platform_name, endian_format from

v$transportable_platform;

Heterogeneous migrations are more complex because only a subset of tools are
available for migration, and customers need to do thorough testing.

Migration Approaches
Figure 2 depicts various migration paths that customers can take to migrate Oracle E-
Business Suite to AWS depending on their current platform, and the available tooling
and experience.

Figure 2 – Various Oracle E-Business Suite migration paths that customers can take

Depending on the current operating system and endianness of the platform, you must
use the appropriate tools to migrate your Oracle E-Business Suite to AWS.

Table 2 identifies each tool and its support for homogeneous and heterogeneous
migrations.

Table 2 - Tools for homogenous and heterogenous migrations

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Application
or
Database
Tier Level Homogeneous Heterogeneous
Tool
tool/utility OS Migration OS migration Notes

CloudEndure Application Yes No Block

and replication
Database
Tier

Oracle E- Application Yes No File system

Business Tier copy
Suite
Cloning

Oracle Data Database Yes No Physical

Guard Tier database
replication
using redo
log shipping

Oracle Database Yes Yes Migration of

Transportable Tier data files and
Tablespaces database
tablespaces
structures

Oracle RMAN Database Yes No Oracle

backup and Tier Native
restore Backup and
Restore tool

Oracle Not N/A N/A Logical

GoldenGate Supported replication of
for Oracle a database
E-Business
Suite
migration

Oracle Data Database Yes Yes Export/import

Pump Tier utility

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Migration and Assessment Tools on AWS

Along with Oracle E-Business Suite-specific tools, you can use other AWS services to
migrate files and objects from on-premises to AWS.

Migration Evaluator – (Formerly known as TSOLogic) – Use for application discovery,

building a business case, and right sizing environments on AWS.

AWS Snowball – Use to move terabytes of data in about a week to AWS. You can use
it to move things like databases, backups, media content, and more.

AWS DataSync – Use to move large amounts of data online between on-premises
storage and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic File
System (Amazon EFS), or Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.

AWS Storage Gateway – Use to implement hybrid cloud storage use cases such as
moving backups to the cloud, or using on-premises file shares backed by cloud storage.

AWS Direct Connect – Use to establish a dedicated network connection from your
premises to AWS.

Architectures for Running Oracle E-Business

Suite on AWS
High Level Architecture for Running Oracle E-
Business Suite on AWS
There are a few other components that may require your attention as part of your
migration scenario. See Figure 3 for an illustration of multiple application servers
deployed across availability zones (AZs) for high-availability.

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Figure 3 - Multiple application servers deployed across AZs for high-availability

Some application tier nodes may reside in a subnet acting as a demilitarized zone
(DMZ) (AP1 and AP2) as part of the customer facing applications such as Oracle
Internet Expenses module within E-Business Suite.

There is also a reverse proxy that front-ends the application tier (AP1 through AP7).
This is because you may have custom rules, such as ex iRules for F5, configured at the
load balancer for URL filtering, redirection, or other purposes. It may not be possible to
remove these dependencies during the migration, so a request from the load balancer
would take the same path as in an old E-Business Suite environment.

For storage required for shared APPL_TOP in Oracle E-Business Suite, you can
subscribe to 3rd party Network File Storage (NFS) from AWS Marketplace. Many of the
Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution providers on-premises have an equivalent
cloud offering in AWS Marketplace. By subscribing, you can eliminate the need for
repeating work and procedural change that might be required when you move to a new
shared file system. You can also use Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) as a shared file
system on AWS.

To improve availability and achieve disaster recovery, you can provision a standby
database instance in a different region and copy the Amazon Machine Images (AMIs)
for application tiers.

We will now dive deeper into various database architectures for running Oracle E-
Business Suite. You can choose different architectures for running Oracle database,

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depending on the Recovery Point Objective/Recovery Time Objective (RTO/RPO),

performance, and throughput requirements.

Oracle E-Business Suite Database Tier on Amazon

EC2
Figure 4 shows the deployment architecture for running an Oracle database underlying
E-Business Suite in a high-availability mode on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
(Amazon EC2). In this setup, there is a primary database instance running on Amazon
EC2 (subnet1/AZ1). You can select the compute-optimized or memory-optimized EC2
instance, depending on CPU and memory utilization metrics available as part of the
migration assessment phase. This instance may use AWS EBS io1 volumes to
guarantee the Provisioned Input/Output Operations Per Second (PIOPS). AWS EBS
volumes can be provisioned from 4GiB up to 16TiB. Each volume provides up to 64K
IOPS. You can optionally make use of Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM)
for striping and mirroring to achieve more IOPS and throughput than is supported by a
single EBS volume, and for the high availability at the database storage layer.

Figure 4 - Oracle on Amazon EC2 High Availability Architecture

For additional availability and reporting offloading capability within the same Region,
you can deploy another read-only standby database instance running on an Amazon
EC2 instance in a different AZ (private subnet2/region1), using Oracle Active Data
Guard. You can configure Parallel Concurrent Processing (PCP) for an Oracle E-
Business Suite environment, and offload specific read-only reporting jobs to an active

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standby database instance. This can reduce the load on the primary database and
make resources available for transactions and other read-write jobs. See Oracle
Support Note #2608030.1 — Using Active Data Guard Reporting with Oracle E-
Business Suite Release 12.2 and Oracle Database 19c for details.

Note: An Oracle login and Support Identifier are required to access Oracle
Support Notes.

In addition to enjoying the benefits of high availability architecture within an AWS

Region, customers can also replicate the primary database to another region for
disaster recovery purposes.

Cross-region replication for databases can be configured using Oracle Data Guard
Physical Standby. See Oracle Support Note #1963472.1 — Business Continuity for
Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2 Using Oracle 12c (12.1.0.2) Physical Standby
Database for details.

Migrating Oracle E-Business Suite to the Same

Operating System
Oracle E-Business Suite Migration using Rapid Clone
and Smart Clone (Homogeneous)
Migration Using Rapid Clone
If the source and target operating systems for Oracle E-Business Suite migration are
the same, you can use the Rapid Clone tool to migrate your database to AWS.

NOTE: Cloning from a later version of an operating system to an earlier

one is not supported.

Rapid Clone does not modify the source system. The adpreclone.pl script prepares
the source system to be cloned by collecting information about the app-tier, database-
tier, and by creating generic templates from existing files that contain source-specific,
hard-coded values.

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After running adpreclone.pl, copy the relevant files and directories from the source
system to the target system, and then run the adcfgclone.pl configuration script. The
values for various parameters are required to create the context file that is used to
configure the target system. A few of these values are calculated from the current target
system, and adcfgclone.pl prompts for the others.

See Oracle Support Note #1383621.1 — Cloning Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2
with Rapid Clone for details.

Migration Using Smart Clone

Oracle Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite provides the ability to
clone an Oracle E-Business Suite system automatically using the Smart Clone
procedure. Smart Clone expects, as a prerequisite, the target Oracle E-Business Suite
database to be cloned and discovered in the Enterprise Manager. Smart Clone starts
with taking the discovered source database as an input to configure a database target,
then clones the applications tier of the source instance. This results in creating a target
Oracle E-Business Suite system which is ready to use.

For more information, see Cloning an Oracle E-Business Suite System.

Whether you are using the Rapid Clone tool or Smart Clone, you can migrate data from
source to target using Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN), Data Guard, Data Pump,
Transportable Tablespaces, or by directly copying the .dbf files to the target, depending,
on the downtime available.

Database Migration Tools

Oracle RMAN Backup and Restore
RMAN is backup/restore tool for Oracle database. The Oracle Secure Backup (OSB)
plugin enables you to copy your backup directly to Amazon S3 and restore it to an
Amazon EC2 instance.

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Figure 5 – Copy your backup to Amazon S3

Oracle Data Guard

Oracle Data Guard is used for high availability and disaster recovery of Oracle
databases. You accomplish this by setting up a standby database instance in the same
or a different location, and mirroring the changes from the primary database instance to
a standby instance in synchronous or asynchronous mode. Oracle Data Guard can also
be used for database migrations.

You can set up an Oracle Data Guard standby database for your on-premises or co-
location Oracle instance on Amazon EC2. Data Guard standby is synchronized,
effectively mirroring the live database on the new instance running on Amazon EC2. A
switchover to the new database instance can be performed during a suitable
maintenance window. We recommend that you have a dedicated bandwidth between
on-premises/co-location to the AWS Cloud through AWS Direct Connect.

Oracle Data Pump

The Data Pump utilities enable you to move existing data in the Oracle format to and
from Oracle databases. For example, Data Pump export files can move data among
different Oracle databases that run on the same or different operating systems. This is a
logical replication (data is extracted and imported into the target), so it can be used for
homogeneous as well as heterogeneous database migrations.

For migrating Oracle E-Business Suite using Oracle Data Pump, please see the Oracle
Support Note #1926203.1 - Export/Import Process for Oracle EBS 12.2 Using Oracle
Database 12c. Similar notes exist for other database versions.

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Oracle Transportable Tablespaces

The Oracle transportable tablespaces feature enables you to move a set of tablespaces
from one Oracle database to another.

To move or copy a set of tablespaces:

1. Make the tablespaces read-only.

2. Copy the data files of these tablespaces.
3. Use Export and Import to move the database information (metadata) stored in
the data dictionary.
After you copy the data files and export the metadata, you can optionally put the
tablespaces in read/write mode.

Migrating Oracle E-Business Suite Using CloudEndure

CloudEndure is a migration and replication tool available from AWS which can be used
for both migrating applications and setting up disaster recovery environments on AWS.
CloudEndure works by migrating or replicating blocks of storage devices from source to
target. Because it operates at the block level, CloudEndure can migrate various
workloads including ERP applications from virtual machines, the cloud, or physical data
centers. CloudEndure supports migration from Windows and Linux operating systems to
AWS. See Figure 6 for an architecture showing various components of CloudEndure,
and how they work together to migrate the workloads on AWS.

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Figure 6 - Components of CloudEndure and how they work to migrate workloads on AWS

The CloudEndure orchestration engine automatically launches a fully operational Oracle

EBS environment in the target AWS Region, enabling a Recovery Time Objective
(RTO) of mere minutes. The CloudEndure automated machine conversion process
takes approximately 30 seconds, and ensures that Windows and Linux machines
replicated from physical, virtual, and cloud-based infrastructure will natively boot and
run transparently in AWS. CloudEndure automatically handles all hypervisor and OS
configuration changes, boot process changes, and OS activation and installation of
target infrastructure guest agents.

The major steps to migrate an Oracle E-Business Suite environment using CloudEndure
are as follows:

1. Identify the list of servers (by name) to be migrated, and break down the list to
migration waves.
2. Install the CloudEndure software agents on the selected servers to initiate
replication, and confirm the replication progress within the CloudEndure
Console.
3. Assess the source Oracle EBS network to plan the network creation in the target
infrastructure.
4. Create the target network within the target infrastructure of choice.
5. When server replication is complete, create test target machines using the
CloudEndure dashboard, and confirm that they are functioning and accessible.

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6. Upon confirmation of the successful target machine’s launch, engage with the
business or application owners for Oracle EBS acceptance tests. If corrections
are required, modify the target blueprints accordingly and repeat this step. If the
acceptance tests are completed successfully, proceed to cutover migration.
7. Cutover migration steps include:
a. Schedule a migration cutover window.
b. Prevent user connectivity to the source Oracle EBS environment.
c. Create a final version of the target machines.
d. Confirm Oracle EBS Application readiness.
e. Redirect user traffic to new target machines.
f. Stop the CloudEndure replication on the source servers that were cut over
and decommission them.
For more details on CloudEndure, see CloudEndure Migration.

Migrating for Oracle E-Business Suite Across

Operating Systems (Same Endian Format)
For some customers, their source and target platforms are Little Endian, but their
operating systems might be different; for example, RedHat Linux to SUSE Linux. In
these cases, cloning utilities such as Rapid Clone and Smart Clone can’t be used. This
situation is considered to be a platform migration. In this scenario, you can still use
Oracle database tools such as Oracle RMAN, Oracle Data Guard, and Oracle
transportable tablespaces for migration, but you must install a new application tier using
the Rapid Install utility and configure it as a target.

For more information, see the following Oracle Support Notes:

• #2048954.1 - Application Tier Platform Migration with Oracle E-Business Suite

Release 12.2.

• #2011169.1 - Transportable Databases for EBS Release12.2.

Transportable Database is the fastest way to migrate data between two platforms,
because the process simply consists of copying database files and then using RMAN to
convert data files (using the rman convert database command). The E-Business

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Suite Transportable Databases process for migration does, however, require that the
source and target database be from the same release and patchset version.

Migrating Oracle E-Business Suite Across

Platforms (Different Endian Format)
Oracle E-Business Suite Cross-platform Migration
Using Oracle Transportable Tablespaces
Application Tier Migration
High-level steps for application tier migration:

• Prepare the source and target systems for migration.

• Run adpreclone.pl on the source system.

• Generate the customer-specific manifest file and upload it to the My Oracle

Support website.
• Copy APPL_TOP, COMMON_TOP/java, COMMON_TOP/webapps to the target.

• Copy the source context file to the target.

• Generate the target context file using the pairs file and the source context file on
the target.
• Run the Rapid Install Wizard with the -techstack option to install technology
components.
• Copy the <FMW_HOME>/Oracle_EBS-app1/applications directory from
the run file system of the Source System to the run file system of the Target
System.

• Run AutoConfig on the target.

• Apply customer-specific patches (obtained from the manifest upload procedure).

• Review the components and technology stack patchset level.

• Regenerate file system objects.

• Clean the nodes.

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• Run AutoConfig.

• Update the printer and workflow settings.

• Start all services on the target.

For details on cross platform migration of the Oracle E-Business Suite application tier,
see Oracle Support Note #2048954.1 — Application Tier Platform Migration with Oracle
E-Business Suite Release 12.2.

Database Migration
Transportable tablespaces is an Oracle database feature that provides a faster means
to move bulk data from one database to another, independent of the operating system
of the source and target. Cross Platform Transportable Tablespaces (XTTS) provides
functionality for distributing data and database migration specifically across platforms of
different Endian (byte-ordering) formats.

This migration method is particularly suited for very large databases, where the relative
size of metadata is small compared to data.

For more information, see the Oracle Support Note #2674405.1 - Using Transportable
Tablespaces to Migrate Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2 Using Oracle Database
19c Enterprise Edition. This note also contains the procedure to migrate the Application
tier.

You can perform incremental data transfer using Oracle Transportable Tablespace. See
Oracle Support Note #2471245.1 - Reduce Transportable Tablespace Downtime using
Cross Platform Incremental Backup.

Incremental backup is only supported for the same OS platforms, and from Big Endian
platforms to Linux OS only.

Table 3 - Typical flow of migration using incremental backups when using XTTS

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1. Initial 3. Roll 4. Final

phase 2. Prepare forward incrementation 5. Transport

• Install • Run expdp • Create • Alter source • Export

target DB on source incremental Tablespaces to Tablespaces
backup Read_Only metadata
• Prepare • Transfer
the source dump files • Transfer • Create final • Transfer
and data incremental incremental backup metadata to
• Execute
files on backup to target
scripts • Transfer and apply
target target
backup to target • Import
• Convert to • Apply metadata
target incremental
backup

Considerations for Running Oracle EBS on

AWS
Sizing
It’s important to right size the Oracle E-Business Suite environment while migrating to
AWS, to save on infrastructure and licensing costs. Right sizing is also important for
your business users to get adequate performance from E-Business Suite on the cloud.
Migration to the cloud is an opportunity to fix long-term outstanding issues that you
might have in your current E-Business Suite environment.

Here are a few questions to ask your IT team when sizing Oracle E-Business Suite on
AWS:

• When are the peak periods of usage? (For example, period close and batch data
load.)

• What is the pattern of load spikes on the system? Is it due to transactional or

batch load?

• What is the number of named concurrent users in the source system, and their
usage profiles?

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• How much business data has to be retained in the system online?

• What is the percentage of storage growth year-over-year?

• How many reporting jobs are there? Can those be offloaded to a read-only
standby database created using Oracle Active Data Guard?

• What is the response time requirement from the system?

Getting the answers to these questions will help you right size your Oracle E-Business
Suite instance, and enable you to select the right deployment topology.

Throughput Requirements
Throughput is another important factor to consider when selecting the compute instance
for a database-tier. Throughput determines how much data can be read or written to the
disk per second by the compute OS. For some customers, we have seen this number
get as high as 2+ GB/s when there are events such period-end close, and multiple
batch jobs running at the same time performing heavy read-write operations. For Oracle
RAC workloads, you would combine the throughput from all RAC instances when
moving to a non-RAC-based deployment on AWS. You can select EBS Optimized
instances, which provide dedicated bandwidth up to 38K MB/s, and high throughput up
to 4.7 GB/s between compute and storage.

Integrations with On-premises Applications

When migrating Oracle E-Business Suite to AWS, you would ideally have the following
integrations:

• Single Sign On

o Enterprise-wide Single Sign-on with Microsoft Active Directory

o Integration with OKTA

• Microsoft Sharepoint

• Oracle EBS B2B integration leveraging File based, FTP, HTTP, and so on.

• Integrating with CRM/ERP systems like salesforce, SAP, and so on.

• Message Queue-based integration using Kafka, IBM MQ, and so on with Oracle
EBS.

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Follow relevant support articles from My Oracle Support to integrate with these
applications and 3rd party services. Note that you must have an Oracle account and an
Oracle support plan to access these articles.

Best Practices for Migrating Oracle E-Business

Suite to AWS
Proof of Concept
After you perform the migration assessment, identify the migration path, and design the
target architecture for running Oracle E-Business Suite on AWS, it is important to
perform a Proof of Concept. Note all the required input and output parameters.

Migrate vs. Upgrade

For homogeneous migrations, you can upgrade your E-Business Suite on-premises
first, and then perform the migration as a separate step. This helps eliminate issues
related to upgrade vs. migration. This approach requires additional hardware, which you
will have to install on-premises.

If you are doing only homogeneous migration and don’t want to upgrade, you can
directly migrate your Oracle E-Business Suite environment to AWS.

For heterogeneous and cross-platform migrations, you can perform re-platforming and
migrations at the same time, because the new technology stack in the application tier
has to be configured by running the Rapid Install utility. When you have migrated to the
cloud, you can upgrade to the latest Oracle E-Business Suite version later.

Database Tier and Application Tier

Due to latency considerations and integration issues, we recommend that you perform
database tier and application tier migration at the same time.

Identification of Read-only Workloads

If you haven’t yet done this for your on-premises environment, we recommend that you
identify read-only workloads such as reports, batch jobs and ETL jobs, and use Oracle
Active Data Guard read-only standby for offloading the read-only workload. This

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enables you to scale the environment and serve transactional workloads with optimal
performance.

AWS Native Services for Customizations

Customers often develop custom user interfaces and APIs on top of Oracle E-Business
Suite functionality for their business specific requirements. Although Oracle E-Business
Suite has all the underlying technical infrastructure available for building and hosting
custom user interfaces (UIs), we recommend that you make use of AWS services such
as Amazon Elastic Beanstalk, AWS Lambda, Amazon AppFlow, and AWS Glue for UI
development and data integration. This approach helps you reduce the load on your
Oracle E-Business Suite environment, and help achieve agility and CI/CD adoption. You
can also build solutions like serverless data lakes and machine learning architectures
on AWS surrounding your ERP systems, such as Oracle E-Business Suite, to analyze
data, generate insights, and for predictions.

SAPs
When migrating from servers with different CPU processor architectures, it might be
difficult to compare the CPU performance and map source to target servers. For
example, IBM Power Systems and Amazon EC2 use different CPU processor
architectures. EC2 instances run on either x86 or ARM-based processors, while the IBM
Power Systems runs on IBM Power processors. As a result, there are no direct
performance or sizing benchmarks that map the two platforms. For this reason, we refer
to SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS) to normalize the CPU performance
between IBM Power Systems and Intel x86 processors. For details, see Estimating
Amazon EC2 instance needed when migrating ERP from IBM Power Systems.

Correct Stakeholders in the Discussion

Throughout the process, it is important to engage the correct stakeholders in the
process. In our discussions with customers, we engaged with personas such Head of
IT, Database Administrators (DBAs), and Chief Information Officers (CIOs). When
working with AWS teams, it is helpful to set up deep dive technical discussions in the
form of workshops, assess AWS migration skills in the team, plan for implementation
timelines, and post-migration activities.

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Amazon Web Services Migrating Oracle E-Business Suite on AWS

Conclusion
In this whitepaper, we covered various approaches for migrating Oracle E-Business
Suite to AWS. The approach varies depending on your current OS platform, and the OS
on AWS. We also covered advanced architectures for running Oracle E-Business Suite
on AWS. You can have variations on installations depending on the volume,
performance SLAs, and integrations with other systems. Finally, we covered the
considerations and best practices that you should follow to have a smooth experience
migrating to AWS. We hope you find this guidance useful in your journey to the cloud.

Contributors
Contributors to this document include:

• Ejaz Sayyed, Sr. Partner Solution Architect, AWS

• Tara Lodh, Specialist Solution Architect, Migrations, AWS

Document Revisions
Date Description
November First publication
2020

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