DNS Belgium has migrated the database behind its registration platform from Oracle to PostgreSQL. This reduces the platform’s dependence on non-European technology and marks an important step in the organisation’s move away from AWS.
At the end of last year, DNS Belgium announced that it would be looking for an alternative to AWS. The registration platform, which records who has registered .be, .brussels and .vlaanderen domain names, will soon be moved from AWS to a new provider.
As part of that transition, the organisation is also taking the opportunity to move away from Oracle. There are several reasons for this. DNS Belgium aims to reduce its reliance on non-European providers and is therefore exploring viable alternatives wherever possible.
Another factor is that Oracle licences are less flexible when deployed in a sovereign European cloud environment or on private infrastructure than when purchased through a large American cloud provider. Remaining with Oracle would have made the use of its technology significantly more expensive.
Isn’t PostgreSQL American?
PostgreSQL, a relational database management system, was originally developed more than thirty years ago at the University of California. In that sense, it could be considered “American”. However, it is an open-source project. This means that its source code is freely available for others to build upon and that we are free to use and manage the database environment ourselves.
It also means that the PostgreSQL database operated by DNS Belgium is not subject to US legislation or the associated data privacy risks that may arise from it.
This makes DNS Belgium less dependent on individual suppliers. At the same time, our choice provides greater transparency and control over the core processes of the internet
Is open source reliable enough?
Yes. DNS Belgium evaluates all of its suppliers and expects them to comply with European and Belgian legislation. Open-source software is somewhat unique in this regard, as it is generally not controlled by a single commercial vendor.
At the same time, it is important for internet infrastructure organisations such as internet exchanges and registries (including DNS Belgium) to choose open architectures, open standards and open-source software wherever possible. This approach ensures that the technology we use remains compatible with other systems.
“This makes DNS Belgium less dependent on individual suppliers. At the same time, our choice provides greater transparency and control over the core processes of the internet,” says Johan Heylen, Platform Engineer at DNS Belgium.
An open-source alternative such as PostgreSQL offers more than enough stability and functionality. It has been actively developed for over 35 years and is used in millions of environments, ranging from small hobby projects to large-scale professional platforms. The developer community is also large and active enough to provide confidence that the software will continue to evolve in the years ahead.
Switching now, moving later
DNS Belgium’s decision to make the switch now, before migrating to a new cloud environment, is a deliberate one. By doing so, we can configure our tools and services for PostgreSQL and thoroughly test them in advance.
When the move away from AWS takes place, we will only need to migrate a PostgreSQL database to a new cloud environment, rather than carrying out a database conversion and a cloud migration at the same time.
By spreading the work across two separate projects, we can test both stages thoroughly and make the overall migration safer and smoother.
“Otherwise, you risk only discovering potential issues during the move away from AWS, which would make the process unnecessarily more complex,” says Heylen.
Eleven years of experience
PostgreSQL is not new to DNS Belgium. “We had already been considering moving away from Oracle for some time, partly because of the company’s licensing policies,” says Heylen. “That is why we have used PostgreSQL as the standard for other databases within the organisation since 2015. Over the years, this allowed us to build up substantial experience before migrating our primary database.”
Challenges and improvements
The migration itself went relatively smoothly thanks to Amazon’s database migration tool, which supports multiple database platforms.
For DNS Belgium, the move to PostgreSQL also provided an excellent opportunity to review and modernise the database itself. “Over the years, systems like these accumulate a lot of data and code that are no longer needed. We removed that as part of the migration. Examples include fax-related data and the domain transfer process that existed before transfer codes were introduced. Cleaning up these legacy elements significantly reduces the size of the database,” explains Heylen.
Another improvement involves further automation of database management. “We had already automated much of this, particularly since moving to the cloud in 2017. However, over time, small differences had emerged between certain test environments and the production environment. With this migration, we are standardising everything, using the same definitions and schemas everywhere. That makes the environment far more predictable.”
Another challenge was ensuring comparable performance levels. “Certain operations are highly optimised in Oracle, so we needed to achieve similar performance in PostgreSQL running on a different CPU architecture. That required extensive performance testing to bring everything up to the same level,” says Heylen.
Minimal impact for domain name holders
The migration itself took place on 7 May and lasted just under an hour. Domain name holders did not notice anything. The only potential impact was for users who happened to be registering a new domain name or transferring an existing one at that exact time, in which case they may have experienced a short delay.
Registrars were informed in advance and advised not to carry out large-scale registration operations immediately before the migration. No changes are required to their systems or those of their customers.
Ready for the future
The move from Oracle to PostgreSQL also serves as a first practical test ahead of the transition to a new cloud environment later this year.
“We have carried out migrations before and always aim to keep impact and downtime to an absolute minimum,” says Heylen. “What we learn from this project will help guide future migrations. We want to carry them out with minimal disruption to external stakeholders, through a high-quality process and with a strong focus on business continuity.”
