Aerospace
Challenges
• No downtime allowed for insertion
• Secure, mission-critical environment with diverse host platforms
• Large number of paths in SAN environment (over 20,000)
• Mix of remote and local migration
• Due to the customer’s stringent project timing, not all hosts could be migrated at the same time, resulting in a complex migration schedule
Solution
• CMO appliances can be deployed for migration without any downtime, and while applications are running
• Built-in TCP stack enables remote migration across data centers
• Compression and Encryption deliver secure and efficient remote migration
Results
• Deployment process was smooth due to no required changes to existing environment
• Remote migration was efficient, resulting in almost a 7-to-1 bandwidth savings due to compression
• Zero-impact design allowed for prolonged in-band deployment, where migration could be scheduled at the convenience of the application owners
The Story
A Cirrus Data Solutions technology partner conducted this migration at a major aerospace facility where only technicians with security clearance were allowed access to the mission-critical production environment. The migration project faced additional challenges such as very old legacy hardware (including some SUN Microsystems storage arrays), non-standard practices in zoning and LUN masking, etc. The resulting environment complexity caused a very large number of paths to be discovered and mapped by the Cirrus Migrate On-Premises (CMO) appliance upon insertion (over 20,000).
Despite the complexity surrounding this migration, includingits complicated schedule, the simplicity of CMO allowed the technology partner to perform the insertion, migration, and cut-over smoothly with minimal training and with very little help from Cirrus Data, even with very little lead and setup time allotted.
CMO is the perfect solution for projects with little to no time for preparation and setup. It attaches to the production environment in seconds, simply plugging into the existing fabric and seamlessly inserting into the data path while all systems are kept online, and migrates your data to any type of new storage array you designate. CMO also automates the manual tasks that are usually associated with data migration; automation saves time and reduces the chance for errors. Cirrus Data’s Transparent Datapath Intercept (TDI) patented technology enables live deployment with zero downtime.
The fact that CMO could be deployed without any downtime while mission-critical applications continued to run was integral to this aerospace government facility choosing the solution. Due to varying schedule requirements and delays in third-party hardware procurement, the CMO appliances were deployed in the data path for an extensive period of time (many months) with no negative impact to the production environment.
