Date: May 2008
Author:
Bob Laliberte
Title:
Analyst
Related Practice Areas For
This Brief:
Intelligent Information Management Services and Channel
Abstract:
Data migrations and consolidations are expensive, time
consuming and difficult. For years, they have been
manually intensive, error prone projects. SANpulse has
developed a technology with specialized resources and
processes to deliver a migration service proven to
reduce time, risk and cost.
Dealing with the Inevitable
The dreaded data migration project: Every IT shop goes
through it sooner or later. Though the reasons for data
migration vary from technology refresh to complete data
center migrations, they all have one thing in common:
Typically, they are not eagerly anticipated. Why do data
migration projects have the same appeal as a trip to the
dentist for a root canal? Basically, this is due to the
complexity of the environments and the risk of something
going wrong during the process of moving a company’s
data and applications to a new infrastructure.
IT environments have grown more complex as companies
transform their infrastructures to accommodate today’s
rapidly changing business needs. IT organizations are
creating highly available and dynamic platforms to
support service oriented architectures (SOA), composite
applications and virtualization services. As part of
that process, server, switch and storage technology are
regularly upgraded to handle increased demands. While
the expected end results are eagerly anticipated, the
actual task of moving and consolidating infrastructure
and data is dreaded.
Data migration, however, is still a very manual process.
Typical engagements involve a small army of consultants
that consumes valuable customer IT resources for the
duration of a project, which can easily last six months
or more. Reliance on manual data collection and analysis
methods significantly increases the length of the
project and typically produces more than a few errors.
Relying on Excel spreadsheets can create additional risk
in highly dynamic environments as any change renders the
configuration obsolete. This can result in servers being
dropped from a scheduled migration and not being picked
up until the end of the project—requiring the old
storage infrastructure to remain operational for that
period. Completing migrations in a timely manner is
important—especially if old equipment is leased as
additional charges usually apply for every day it is
still on site.
Ultimately, reliance on manual collection, configuration
and migration results in longer projects with greater
risks and higher costs. What is needed is a way to
automate the process, thereby reducing the risk, time
and cost associated with data migrations.
The SANpulse Solution
SANpulse was created just a few years ago, but its
founders and employees boast decades of data migration
experience. Founded and staffed by highly skilled data
migration veterans, the company understands the problems
associated with migrating data through extensive
experience. SANpulse attacked the problem— leveraging
people, processes and technology to greatly accelerate
migration and consolidation projects while
simultaneously reducing risk and cost.
At the core of its solution is the SANlogics Technology
Platform, a highly flexible and modular software package
that automates the data migrations process. Essentially,
the software collects information about the existing
environment to create a detailed “blueprint” from the
host (or application, depending on accessibility) to the
spindle. Leveraging this information, the entire
environment is then mapped to the new architecture.
Within the first two weeks of a project, all path
information, hardware configuration and automated
command sets are created—giving SANpulse tremendous
flexibility to respond to last minute changes. What
makes the software so powerful is its ability to rapidly
incorporate new technologies. As no two environments are
alike, SANlogics utilizes SAN Blocks to build a data
migration blueprint that is customized for each
environment. SAN Blocks are used to describe the
resources (e.g., storage systems, data movers),
processes (e.g., configuration best practices, naming
conventions) and people associated with a migration
project (e.g., SAN architect, project manager).
SANlogics can interface with a broad range of
applications and many popular data movers are supported,
including SRDF, MirrorView, TrueCopy, Open Replicator
and RecoverPoint. SANlogics leverages SAN Blocks to
automatically generate the software and scripts that are
used on the day of a migration. Essentially, the
software’s ability to rapidly adapt to new environments
simplifies a very complicated process.
Through automated data collection, one or two experts
can replace the army of consultants and reduce the time
and error involved with manual collection. SANpulse also
eliminates the need to dedicate customer resources to a
project. The upfront work completed by SANpulse enables
greater volumes of hosts to be migrated at a time. In
the past, migrating 10-12 servers a weekend was good;
with SANpulse, 60 or 70 are easily accomplished. Because
all the data is collected and the blueprint created for
the entire environment, more can get accomplished within
a maintenance window. The most difficult part of the
SANpulse process is fixing servers that have been
running in production for years and don’t always come
back to life cleanly after a reboot.
The SANpulse solution is comprised of a combination of
People, Process and Technology. Its services include:
- SAN Blueprint – Automates data
collection and mapping to the new environment
- SAN Audits and Cleanups –
Verifies the environment against industry or
customer best practices
- Migrations and Consolidations –
Coordinates data and server migrations or
consolidations
- Storage Reclamation –
Identifies and assists in reclaiming unused storage
- Storage Retiering – Identifies
and reclassifies storage to reside on multiple tiers
With SANpulse being a relatively new company, it would
be understandable—even prudent—to be skeptical of any
claims of dramatically reduced migration times, reduced
risk and lower costs. The best way to separate the
reality from the glitter is to talk to actual customers.
Though a new, emerging company, SANpulse already has an
impressive number of big name customers.
Proven People, Processes and Technology
ESG spoke to several SANpulse customers, whom for legal
or competitive reasons cannot disclose their names
publically. These customers were more than willing to
share their SANpulse experiences.
Independent Software Company
ESG spoke with a large independent software company that
had performed a technology refresh of its mid-tier
storage arrays. The environment consisted of about 20 TB
of mid-range storage and roughly 60 hosts. Its Director
of Enterprise Storage wasn’t satisfied with its current
storage vendor’s migration solution—a manual, time
consuming product. Four years ago, a similar process was
used to migrate 12 TB of midrange storage. It involved
not only a number of consultants, but also several
internal resources to be dedicated to the project. It
took 4 ½ months to complete. The Director of Storage was
amazed to see the process being proposed again by the
storage vendor. Being a big proponent of automation
software, the Director challenged the storage vendor to
find another solution. It introduced SANpulse. He
checked references and then made the decision to engage.
The result: 20 TB of storage was moved in less than two
months—with no messy cleanup and at 30% of the cost of
the last migration. Only one SANpulse employee was on
site full time, and two to three attended actual
migrations during weekend maintenance windows. The
company has re-engaged SANpulse to migrate 85 TB of Tier
One storage and approximately 300 servers.
Large Mutual Fund Company
The second company ESG spoke with had a similar
experience. This was a large mutual fund company in the
NYC metropolitan area. IT had two separate environments
consisting of Tier One and Midrange storage totaling 15
TB and approximately 100 servers. In this case, a major
storage vendor presented the SANpulse solution. SANpulse
was contracted for the migration after verifying
references.
The result: All the data and hosts were migrated in less
than three months. This reference also reinforced the
value of the automation software as the project did not
require any internal support. In fact, the user said
that the “project was on autopilot—all I had to do was
provide the timeline.” In particular, this reference was
very impressed with the SANpulse employee’s attention to
detail and responsiveness. The fact that the project was
completed so quickly enabled the acceleration of some
other project schedules.
Financial Services
The third company ESG spoke to was a financial services
company located in the NYC metropolitan area. Its IT
environment consisted of 200 to 300 TB of storage with
over 600 hosts. The company was impressed with the
automation aspects and decided to leverage the SANpulse
solution.
The result: Four months later, the migration project was
complete and, as the reference put it, “clean,” meaning
that all the data and hosts were migrated and there were
no additional stragglers that needed migrating—a common
occurrence with the old manual method. In fact, this
client estimated that it would have taken at least six
months using the old method, would have been very
painful and would have required additional resources. As
an example, this client cited the discovery process. In
the past, it would have taken 6-8 weeks and an army of
support people. In contrast, the SANpulse discovery,
leveraging the SANlogics technology platform, took only
two people 3-4 weeks. In particular, this client was
impressed with the flexibility that the SANpulse
technology and process enabled. If a server fell off
schedule, it could easily be picked up in the next
week’s migration.
After speaking with all three, several items became
quite clear:
- The SANpulse solution works extremely well and
its automated capabilities provide:
- Simplified migration
- Reduced risk
- Accelerated timeframes
- Tremendous flexibility
- Significant cost savings
- Customers are not only satisfied, but
evangelists for the service.
- All users would use SANpulse again. In fact, the
financial services company has already scheduled
another migration project this summer.
The Bottom Line
Data migration projects are a pain point for every IT
shop, largely because of the cumbersome manual process
used to conduct them. For many years, this was an
accepted fact. SANpulse was created to remove that pain
point, leveraging a combination of skilled people,
proven processes and a flexible, automated technology
platform. It already has an impressive customer base
that includes repeat customers—one of the best measuring
sticks—and continues to add new ones.
SANpulse is certainly off to a good start. The
technology platform is now on its second version and
continues to become more user and customer friendly with
improved graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and easy to
understand dashboards. It does, however, still require
an experienced SAN specialist to run. The wizard
technology is still in its infancy, but it’s clearly a
step in the right direction—which is to ultimately
develop enough intelligence in the software so that less
skilled workers can leverage it. As the company scales,
finding highly qualified and skilled SAN specialists
will continue to be a challenge—as it is to the industry
as a whole. Another area that will need to be addressed
is support for a wider array of data mover
software—something the SAN Blocks architecture should be
able to easily accommodate.
SANpulse has a very good relationship with a major
storage vendor, which is a nice security blanket for a
startup. With its reputation starting to spread within
the IT community, it is now landing deals independently.
By accelerating the time to complete migrations and
reducing cost and risk, the company provides a
competitive advantage to any storage vendor utilizing
its services.
Every once in a while, a service or technology comes
along that makes you wonder why everyone isn’t using
it—SANpulse is one of those. If you are going to migrate
data, why wouldn’t you want to do it more quickly, with
less risk and with far less cost? Any company
considering a data migration or consolidation project
should take a look at SANpulse.
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