Migration Assistant for OpenSearch

Migration Assistant is the Kubernetes-native migration platform for moving data, metadata, and live traffic from Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, and Apache Solr to OpenSearch.

The Migration Assistant operating model is:

• You define the migration in workflow configuration.
• Migration Assistant runs the work on Kubernetes.
• You use the Migration Console and Workflow CLI to submit, observe, approve, validate, and switch traffic to the target.

Migration Assistant runs on any Kubernetes distribution. Two choices are independent: where Migration Assistant runs and what you migrate to. Where it runs can be a managed-cloud path, such as Amazon EKS on AWS or Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) on GCP, or any other Kubernetes platform. Each managed-cloud path supplies the identity, image, snapshot, and observability integrations that you typically need for a real migration.

Key capabilities

Migration Assistant provides the following:

• One migration model for snapshot-based migrations with planned downtime (called backfill-only) and zero-downtime migrations that use live-traffic Capture and Replay.
• Repeatable workflows instead of one-time infrastructure choreography.
• Low source-cluster impact through snapshot-based backfill with Reindex-from-Snapshot (RFS).
• Operational checkpoints through approval gates, logs, status views, and validation steps.
• Practical managed-cloud paths (Amazon EKS on AWS and GKE on GCP) that reduce surrounding platform work.

Getting started

1. Decide whether Migration Assistant is the right tool.
2. Understand why Migration Assistant runs on Kubernetes and how the managed-cloud paths fit in.
3. Assess your migration. Review breaking changes, downtime constraints, and required transformations.
4. Choose your deployment path.
5. Learn how a migration runs.
6. Use the Workflow CLI and then pick a playbook.

Looking for the older ECS deployment model? See the classic Migration Assistant documentation.