Migration within the same data center is performed under several circumstances, such as when an organization needs to migrate data within a traditional or private cloud SAN, or to migrate from traditional to private cloud or vice versa.

Alternatively, an organization may decide to migrate from a traditional to converged infrastructure, such as Vblock and FlexPod, or vice versa. Same-center data migration is also used in dedicated and shared multi-tenant environments.

Benefits

Vicom Local Migration Benefits

  • Fastest project completion time with one scalable methodology: Instead of maintaining 14 to 20 different applications, databases and operating systems — not to mention storage-specific tools, processes and subject matter experts — an appliance-based migration allow you to standardize everything into one migration methodology. This improves productivity, predictability and speeds-up overall project completion by minimizing risks, reducing the cost of maintaining custom processes and expensive SME for each migration type. Meet project deadlines in time with one methodology and avoid indirect costs of project delays like lease extension charges, maintenance charges for old storage, or paying for both old and new storage until the migration completed.
  • Migrate data online: Keep your applications up and running as data is migrated in the background over several hours to days, depending on data size.
  • Complete fallback: All Vicom migrations have a guaranteed fallback option to the original system configuration.
    • The Vicom DMA never alters the source data in any way during the migration, providing a failsafe fall back in the unlikely event of a problem during the migration or connecting the servers to the new storage systems.
    • The Vicom DMA does not virtualize storage. The server sees the appliance as an additional path to source storage. Source storage and LUN properties remain unchanged. This means the appliance can be removed from the data path at any point of time
  • Widest interoperability with transparent implementation: Vicom’s DMA supports any to any storage migration with a broad interoperability matrix.

How It Works

Storage connected to same SAN Fabric

The Vicom data migration appliance (DMA) is connected to the storage network where server and source storage are located, then copies data from the source to the destination storage system on a block-to-block (LUN-to-LUN) basis. This lets the server access and interact with the storage while the data is migrating. From the server’s point of view, the DMA is equivalent to adding a source storage path to the LUNs.

Migration begins when the operator matches the source and destination LUNs and activates the DMA Pilot. The appliance performs full baseline data replication while monitoring any data changes in the source storage during migration. Our migration management tools monitor the progress of data transfer and throttle the migration if it is required. Everything is done online while business applications run as usual.

Once baseline migration is complete, incremental synchronization of the changed data can occur to reduce the amount of data transferred during the final cutover. This involves quiescing the migrating servers, migrating the last changed data, and performing remedial tasks such as OS patching and changing HBA firmware.

Our DMA is removed from your environment when migration is complete and server systems are reconfigured to access the new storage. Finally, server applications are restarted by accessing the new storage system.

How It Works

Storage connected to different SAN Fabrics

If the destination storage is connected to another storage network that does not have any connection to source storage, a second DMA can be connected to the destination storage network. The second DMA acts as a proxy by exporting destination storage LUN while at the same time isolating both source and destination SAN Fabric. This proxy enables data migration in multi-tenant and private cloud environments, providing isolation and security without merging both storage networks.

DMA allows selected host or LUN that may be critical in multi-tenant environments to be migrated without disruption. The Vicom solution is scalable to fit your needs. Additional units can be added seamlessly to hit almost any deadline.

Case Study

A perfect example is a Vicom customer who had to migrate 200 terabytes of data from a Hitachi storage array to a 3PAR storage array in one week within the same data center. Four DMAs were deployed, and the entire 200 TB baseline was copied within 12 hours. The migration was completed, including cutover, within a week.

The DMA is a SAN-based, block-level data migration tool that has been used in thousands of enterprise SAN migrations. The entire process was performed by the customer with Vicom specialist support.

The migration was flawless, with all customer applications back in operation well ahead of the planned migration window. Through pre-migration planning and years of data transfer experience, Vicom’s performance reduced the pressing timeframe from several weeks to a single weekend.

Contact us to hear more about how the Vicom solution can offload the work of your next data migration.

Contact Us to Learn More