Data migrations large and small now can be done
any timenot just on weekends.
Hitachi Data Systems Jan. 29 introduced new data migration services based on
its home-developed virtualization platform that enable enterprises to migrate
data between heterogeneous storage systems in the background while servers and
applications stay online.
Most data migrations between storage systems, especially between unrelated storage
silos, take hours or days to complete and most often must be staged late at
night or on weekends when a system is not being used.
Hitachi's new Data Migration
Services provide a coalition of consultative services, advanced data movement
software and intelligent virtualization controllers to enable difficult data
migration projects with virtually no latency and scalability limitations, HDS
Vice President of Global Solution Services Hicham Abdessamad told eWEEK.
"We're providing a whole new approach to data migration,"
Abdessamad said. "Virtualization is now a mature technology, with two and
a half or three years in the market. We're leveraging our virtualization
platform to do all this heavy lifting, and it happens transparently to all the
users on a system."
Of course, there is a certain "performance dip" when system
resources are refocused on a data movement projectespecially a large oneduring
a production day, Abdessamad said.
"But it's really hardly noticeable," he said. "All the data
movement happens in the background. The alternative of shutting down an entire
host storage system in off-hours is much riskier than the real-time service we
now have."
Migration and provisioning complexities often require shutting down
applications to move data or provision new storage capacity, often costing in
excess of $50,000 for each migrated array, according to independent studies
conducted by CIO consultancy ITCentrix.
Click here to read about Hitachi's addition of virtualization capabilities to its blade servers.
According to IDC, 60 percent of all data
centers will relocate over the next five years, primarily for space, power and
cooling reasons. Costs related to moving data and making changes to storage
infrastructures can be substantial, Abdessamad said.
The Hitachi Data Migration Services portfolio includes GSS
Data Migration Consulting and Implementation Services, based on industry best
practices; Data Migration Expert Assistant, an advanced application that
assists in the planning and execution of data migration to remove the risk of
human error and speed the planning process; Tiered Storage Manager, which
enables IT administrators to interactively match application quality-of-service
requirements to heterogeneous storage assets; and Hitachi Virtualization, used
to virtualize and aggregate data from existing storage systems, regardless of
vendor, and migrate the data to new storage systems while the production
applications continue running.
"Data migrations are never easy, no matter how big the data set is or
how prepared a customer is," Brian Babineau, storage analyst with
Enterprise Strategy Group, told eWEEK. "Easy shouldn't be the focus; risk
mitigationwith risk implying minimizing downtime and zero chance of data lossis
of utmost concern. Any customer would forfeit easy in favor of zero risk.
The key thing from Hitachi Data Systems is that the services offerings focus on
the risk side with products making the process simpler."
EMC, IBM,
Hewlett-Packardmost all the big names have a migration service that they
offer, said Tom Trainer, storage analyst with the Evaluator Group.
"HDS differentiates this with using knowledgeable people and the VM [virtual
machine] unit," Trainer said. "Most other vendors have options for
open-systems data and mainframe data migrations. HDS can cover the bases with
this offering and make it easier for the user."
Click here for more information.
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