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## Prepare the target database
Prepare your target YugabyteDB database cluster by creating a database, and a user for your cluster.
### Create the target database
Create the target YugabyteDB database in your YugabyteDB cluster. The database name can be the same or different from the source database name. If the target YugabyteDB database name is not provided, yb-voyager assumes the target YugabyteDB database name to be `yugabyte`. If you do not want to import to the default `yugabyte` database, specify the name of the target YugabyteDB database using the `--target-db-name` argument of the `yb-voyager import` command.
```sql
CREATE DATABASE target_db_name;
```
If you intend to perform a migration assessment, note that the assessment provides recommendations on which tables in the source database to colocate. To ensure that you will be able to colocate tables, create your target database with colocation set to TRUE using the following command:
```sql
CREATE DATABASE target_db_name WITH COLOCATION = true;
```
### Create a user
Create a user with [`SUPERUSER`](../../../api/ysql/the-sql-language/statements/dcl_create_role/#syntax) role.
- For a local YugabyteDB cluster or YugabyteDB Anywhere, create a user and role with the superuser privileges using the following command:
```sql
CREATE USER ybvoyager SUPERUSER PASSWORD 'password';
```
- For YugabyteDB Aeon, create a user with [`yb_superuser`](../../../yugabyte-cloud/cloud-secure-clusters/cloud-users/#admin-and-yb-superuser) role using the following command:
```sql
CREATE USER ybvoyager PASSWORD 'password';
GRANT yb_superuser TO ybvoyager;
```
If you want yb-voyager to connect to the target YugabyteDB database over SSL, refer to [SSL Connectivity](../../reference/yb-voyager-cli/#ssl-connectivity).
Alternatively, if you want to proceed with migration without a superuser, refer to [Import data without a superuser](../../reference/non-superuser/).
## Create an export directory
yb-voyager keeps all of its migration state, including exported schema and data, in a local directory called the _export directory_.
Before starting migration, you should create the export directory on a file system that has enough space to keep the entire source database. Ideally, create this export directory inside a parent folder named after your migration for better organization. You need to provide the full path to the export directory in the `export-dir` parameter of your [configuration file](#set-up-a-configuration-file), or in the `--export-dir` flag when running `yb-voyager` commands.
```sh
mkdir -p $HOME/