Google Migrate to Containers vs pgloader

Google Migrate to Containers is a free, self-hosted tool for moving applications from virtual machines or servers into containers without rewriting or re-architecting them. Its local CLI copies a source VM file system, analyzes it, creates a migration plan, and generates deployment artifacts. It can optionally move data files to persistent volumes. Sources include VMware and Compute Engine VMs, and destinations include Google Kubernetes Engine, GKE Autopilot clusters, and Cloud Run. Supported workloads include Linux applications, IBM WebSphere, JBoss, Apache, Tomcat, WordPress, and Windows IIS applications. Linux workloads can be handled locally in offline mode or on a local network without runtime internet downloads. A local machine needs Docker and several gigabytes of storage. Google recommends assessing workload fit first. The console UI, migctl, and processing-cluster CRDs were discontinued in May 2024; Google directs users to the local CLI. Migration has no charge, while other Google Cloud services cost separately.

pgloader migrates database and flat-file data into PostgreSQL using schema translation, casting rules, and parallel loading. Listed sources are MySQL, MariaDB, MS SQL Server, SQLite, CSV, fixed-width files, and DBF; Oracle support is not built yet. Its pipeline fetches the source catalog, prepares the PostgreSQL target, runs parallel COPY, creates indexes in parallel, and completes the schema. MySQL handling includes enum translation, converting TINYINT(1) to boolean, zero-date handling, and looking up credentials in .my.cnf. The MS SQL Server path includes Azure AD authentication, sequence migration, and multi-column foreign keys. For file imports, rejected rows can be separated after a failed COPY transaction while accepted rows continue loading. Custom casting rules go in a .load file. Version 3 in Common Lisp is the stable packaged release; version 4 is a pre-release JAR requiring Java 21 or later. The free Community tier has best-effort GitHub support. Paid support starts at €100/mo, with higher tiers offering priority handling, SLA-triaged patches, roadmap input, or issue-based support. It is self-hosted on Linux.