Migration & Expansion
Old storage out. New in. Finished?
The joy at new storage system is often killed by the thought of the upcoming data migration.
The migration effort for procurement (migration to the new system) and replacement (migration to the successor system) is underestimated sometimes.
If you take the resulting costs into account, this changes the business calculation.
Much of the resulting migration costs account for downtime and overtime work outside of office hours like weekends.
Zero-Downtime Migration
With the right know-how and the right technologies the storage migration can take place without interrupting operation and within normal working hours.
The foundation for this is provided by storage virtualization. With the help of a permanently or temporarily deployed virtualization layer your data is independent of the storage hardware. This allows data to be moved during operation between different tiers, or even between different storage systems, while keeping their data available at any time.
The safety and consistency of the data can be guaranteed. During migration, a synchronous mirror between the existing storage systems and new systems will be built up continuously as as changes and new data are immediately written to both systems simultaneously. If there will be some form of complication during the migration, your data is still safe and consistent.
A Zero-Downtime Migration will be possible in the following three scenarios:
- Neither the new nor the existing storage system are using storage virtualization.A virtualization layer is added during migration and then removed again afterwards.
- The new storage system is virtualized. During migration, the existing system is integrated into the virtualization layer.
- The new storage system and the existing system are already virtualized.
The virtualization layer can also be renewed and upgraded without downtime, similar to the underlying storage systems. If an update or even a complete replacement of the layer may be necessary, this will be done in several steps. The data is available at any time.
In simplified terms, this looks like this:
- Controlled failover on one side of the redundant storage network
- Update / exchange of the hardware
- Delta-synchronization of the hardware
- Failback / Rebalance
- Repeat this procedure for the other side. Finished
Whether renewal, migration or redesign, our experts will know which approach makes sense in your environment and how this will impact your business.
Call us.
Tel.: +31 (0)243434210
E-Mail: ttec(at)ttec.nl
