Zero-Downtime Migration Now Available in Zilliz Cloud Private Preview
Every data engineer knows the sinking feeling of scheduling "migration downtime"—coordinating with stakeholders, preparing rollback plans, and crossing fingers that everything goes smoothly. Even brief interruptions can cascade into measurable business impact for AI-powered applications handling millions of vector queries daily.
Today, we're excited to announce that the Zero-Downtime Migration option is now available in Private Preview on Zilliz Cloud. This represents the most significant upgrade to our Zilliz Migration Service, eliminating service interruptions entirely during Zilliz cluster migrations.
The Migration Dilemma That's Holding Back AI Innovation
Data migration has traditionally forced an impossible choice: operational continuity or infrastructure evolution. As organizations scale their vector search and AI workloads, they inevitably need to upgrade their infrastructure; however, the cost of downtime continues to grow.
The complexity increases when migrating between different data sources or infrastructure configurations, such as switching from one CU type to another, adopting new cloud regions for compliance, or optimizing resource allocation to improve efficiency. Each situation has historically required careful orchestration of downtime windows that many organizations simply can't accommodate in today's always-on world.
Introducing True Zero-Downtime Migration
Zero-Downtime Migration eliminates this trade-off entirely, enabling seamless cluster-to-cluster migrations within Zilliz Cloud while maintaining full service availability. Key capabilities include:
Continuous service availability during complete cluster migrations—no maintenance windows required
Real-time data synchronization with a second-level lag between source and target clusters
Automated orchestration with zero manual CDC configuration or snapshot scheduling
Complete data integrity covering both historical data and live write streams
Common use cases include upgrading from Serverless to Dedicated clusters, switching CU types, infrastructure optimization, and cross-region migrations for latency optimizations—all without downtime.
How It Works
Our Zero-Downtime Migration leverages a sophisticated dual-stack pipeline that automates the entire migration process:
Advanced Backup Tool: Captures a full snapshot of source cluster data with minimal performance impact.
Real-Time Change Data Capture (CDC): Continuously tracks and synchronizes new writes to target clusters, maintaining a seconds-level lag with automatic conflict resolution.
This approach eliminates the traditional complexity of managing snapshot schedules, CDC configurations, and failover procedures. Users simply click 'Migrate,' and Zilliz Cloud handles the entire process automatically.
Built on Proven Foundation
Zero-Downtime Migration builds on the core strengths of the Zilliz Migration Service — a platform already trusted by teams moving large-scale vector workloads across clouds and formats. Key features include:
Broad source compatibility - Elasticsearch, Pinecone, Qdrant, Milvus, PostgreSQL, and more
Multi-cloud support - AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-premises environments
Vector-optimized processing - Purpose-built for unstructured data and vector embeddings
Offline batch import - High-throughput processing for terabytes of historical data
Enterprise security - End-to-end encryption and compliance-ready architecture
Open source foundation - Built on Vector Transport Service (VTS) and Apache SeaTunnel
Want to explore the full feature set? Check out this documentation.
Exclusive Private Preview Access
Zero-Downtime Migration is available now in Private Preview. As an early adopter, you'll get:
First access to zero-downtime capabilities
Direct input on feature development
White-glove support from our engineering team
No additional costs during preview (standard data processing and transfer charges may apply in future versions)
Getting started is simple:
Log in to the Zilliz Cloud console.
Navigate to cluster migration options in your dashboard
Choose Migration > In Current Organization from the available options
- In the dialog box that pops up, choose Zero Downtime Migration and configure other settings.
- Follow the guided workflow.
Ready to eliminate migration downtime from your AI infrastructure? __Contact our support team to join the Private Preview today and experience the future of seamless data migration. You can also check out our documentation for more information.
What's Next: Expanding the Zero-Downtime Promise
We're actively expanding Zero-Downtime Migration capabilities beyond cluster-to-cluster scenarios.
Coming soon: direct migrations from Milvus, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, Pinecone, Qdrant, and other popular vector databases with the same seamless, uninterrupted experience.
Yuqi WangYuqi Wang is a Product Manager at Zilliz, where she leads product development for Zilliz Cloud offerings, cloud migration services, and vector lake solutions that power AI-native workloads. She brings a strong background across the modern data stack—from ingestion and warehousing to BI—as well as hands-on experience building generative AI products. Yuqi is passionate about transforming complex data and AI technologies into simple, scalable, and user-centric solutions.
- The Migration Dilemma That's Holding Back AI Innovation
- Introducing True Zero-Downtime Migration
- How It Works
- Built on Proven Foundation
- Exclusive Private Preview Access
- What's Next: Expanding the Zero-Downtime Promise
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