Before you begin

Complete the following prerequisites:

1. You must have a Data Replication service. If you do not have a Data Replication service instance, see Creating and managing IBM Cloud services.
2. You must create a project.
3. You must add Data Replication as an associated service to your project.

Creating a Data Replication asset

To set up Data Replication in your project, you configure a Data Replication asset that defines the source and target data stores that your replication job should use. To create a Data Replication asset:

1. From the Assets tab of your project, click New asset > Replicate data.

2. Enter a name.

3. By default, the Copy business goal is selected for you. Copy will synchronize the specified schemas and tables from the source to the target.

4. On the Source options page, select a source connection from the list, or click Add Connection to create a new one. For more information on how to set up each type of connection supported in the Data Replication service, see Supported Data Replication connections.

5. Click Select data.

6. Select a schema to see the list of tables for that schema. You can select one or more schemas and tables.

   Selecting a schema without selecting any tables in the schema will keep all the tables from the source schema synchronized on the target. An asterisk will be added next to the schema in the Replication selection column to indicate that the entire schema will be replicated.

   If you select one or more specific tables from a schema, only those tables will be synchronized. The tables will be listed in the Replication selection column and you can expand and collapse the schema to see the set of selected tables from that schema.

7. On the Target options page, select a target connection from the list, or click Add Connection to create a new one. For more information on how to set up each type of connection supported in the Data Replication service, see Supported Data Replication connections.

8. On the Review page, review the summary, then click Create.

Running your replication

To start replicating data, you run a replication job on a Data Replication service instance. The replication job uses your Data Replication asset configuration.

To run your replication:

1. From the project, click the Assets tab.

2. Click the Data Replication asset.

3. Choose the Data Replication service instance that you want to use to run the replication job from a drop-down list that contains the service instances you can access.

   Note: The Data Replication service instance that is created when the service is installed is only accesible to users with Admin access to the project. If you do not have access to any replication service instances, you can create a new replication service instance or request the Cluster Administrator to grant you access to existing service instances.

4. Click the Run replication icon to start the replication process.

5. The first time you click the Run replication icon on a Data Replication asset, an API key configuration dialog will appear. This API key updates information in the project.

   1. Click Generate an API key.
   2. A Name and Description are provided for you, and you can edit both.
   3. Click Generate and run.
   4. To save your API key, click the Copy icon, and paste into the password manager software of your choice.
   5. Click Close.

The replication status changes to Starting and you can see progress in the event log. The status changes to Running after the replication process starts.

Data replication continues until you stop the process manually. Changes to the selected source schema tables are replicated in the target database tables.

Learn more

• Supported Data Replication connections
• Monitoring replication assets

Parent topic: Data Replication (beta)