Is there a way to enable on going replication for SQL Server 2014 Standard edition?

Question

As per AWS documentation:

AWS DMS supports, as a source, Microsoft SQL Server versions 2005, 2008, 2008R2, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2019 on-premise databases and Amazon EC2 instance databases. The Enterprise, Standard, Workgroup, Developer, and Web editions are supported. Ongoing replication (CDC) is supported for all versions of Enterprise Edition, and Standard Edition version 2016 SP1 and later.

AWS DMS supports, as a source, Amazon RDS DB instance databases for SQL Server versions 2008R2, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2019. The Enterprise and Standard editions are supported. Ongoing replication (CDC) is supported for all versions of Enterprise Edition, and Standard Edition version 2016 SP1 and later.

With source DB being Microsoft SQL Server 2014 (SP3-CU3-GDR) (KB4505422) - 12.0.6293.0 (X64) Standard Edition, CDC cannot be enabled on this server.

EXEC sys.sp_cdc_enable_db; running this command responds with an error:

This instance of SQL Server is the Standard Edition (64-bit). Change data capture is only available in the Enterprise, Developer, and Enterprise Evaluation editions.

My question is what options do we have for on going replication?

Answer 1

This is what I heard back from AWS support. Really just a single option but something which would require a major work. What they have suggested is to upgrade the SQL server to newer versions which support CDC. In our case, it would be SQL server 2016 and above. The major work in upgrading a DB is mostly verifying the application compatibility with the DB. We were able to upgrade the DB without any errors on database end but application will need to be verified.

Other option would be to use other tools like SymmetricDS instead of DMS.