Changing the Data Migration Conversation

If you want your data migration project to survive beyond the initial planning meeting, you usually need to bring a lot of answers, plenty of coffee and donuts, and—depending on how poorly the last data migration went—the occasional olive branch. You’ll also want to spend some time limbering up, since you’ll need to dodge the poisoned arrows from naysayers who know how disruptive a data migration can be.

We’ve sat in on more than a few of these meetings, consumed hundreds of complimentary donuts (never underestimate the importance of a healthy exercise regimen), and, as they say, have heard everything. And what you’re likely to hear in meeting rooms around the country is something like this…

From the system administration team:
⁍ We’ve got 455 host servers running 15 combinations of Linux, Windows, UNIX and VMware and different versions for each OS. Has your data migration tool been tested on all of them?

From the senior storage-attached networking (SAN) engineer:
⁍ Will you need to re-configure each of the 844 zones I have for each switch? If so, I’ll need you to map what you’re planning for each zone including your back-up plan. Oh, and one more thing: will you be providing the Cisco and Brocade experts to help us do this?

From the director of enterprise storage:
⁍ Are you seriously giving my team only eight weeks to change the LUN masking for each of our 1,226 LUNs? Do you think we have nothing else to do?

From the project manager:
⁍ We’ll need another meeting to hammer all of this out. How does next month look on your calendars?

At this point, you’re probably thinking of slipping a few free iPads into those donut boxes to sweeten the deal, but there’s a better way to get everyone onboard. With our Data Migration Server (DMS) solution, the conversation around the table takes a very different tone…

From the system administration team:
⁍ We don’t have to install any software on our host servers? And all of our applications will continue to run uninterrupted with no downtime and no performance hits? Let’s do this!

From the senior SAN engineer:
⁍ I don’t have to make any changes to my production zones? Really? Count us in too and thanks for the coffee.

From the director of enterprise storage:
⁍ No changes to the production storage either? Great! And why is there an iPad under that jelly donut?

From the project manager:
⁍ If everyone agrees, then let’s move on to sizing up the migration deployment requirements.

As you can see, DMS changes the migration conversation and makes getting buy-in (almost) as simple as opening a box of donuts. But the benefits don’t stop there. To see what happens after the donuts are finished and the deployment begins, tune in for my next blog. You can also get the whole story in our new whitepaper, “Storage Data Migration… Simplified.”