Steps to Safe Data Center Migration

Data center migration, defined in simple terms, involves shifting data from one

device to another. For technology managers, center migration has always been

a challenging task involving technology upgrades, workload balancing, server &

data storage consolidation, data classification, data relocation, merger &

acquisitions to move data packets from one device to the other. There are

several elements that contribute in the data center migration such as expansion

beyond current capabilities, density requirements, hosting provider

performance, real estate infrastructure changes, local center economics, density

requirements, green initiatives, staffing considerations and much more.

Data center migration is imposed with several problems by business, technical

and operational requirements. Resource requirements such as CPU cycles,

bandwidth and problems concerning application downtime, technical

incompatibilities and data corruption or loss make it rather difficult to maintain

the IT infrastructure. To avert these risks, the migration project must be carefully

planned and efficiently executed.

Migration project plan involves defining and identifying to be moved, business

objectives, the location to be moved, when it is moved, an estimated time

required in the movement, identify potential problem areas and develop

contingencies, complete task completion checklists. This minimizes the risks of

unexpected downtime, and, interruption to revenue and customer satisfaction

losses. The data migration plan functions as a blueprint for efficient functioning

and uninterrupted processing.

The four essential inputs from the migration plan involve:

1. Defining the business / operational requirements that provide constraints

2. Careful identification of data and associated attributes that are to be migrated

3. Allocating available migration tools.

4. Applying storage and application best practices, in accordance with the types

of data to be migrated (since different data types need different migration tools

& different strategies)

Organizations today can no longer tolerate service disruptions or downtime-

even when they are undertaking complex data center relocations. This further

emphasis that the preventive measures should be taken to ensure safe data

migration practices. Such processes ascertain smooth and on time migration. A

trial run shall be scheduled before the data immigration to unfold potential

issues. Data movement team and the backup resources must work collectively

to ascertain full data resource availability.

In nutshell, though data immigration involves data movement, detailed, upfront

planning shall be done prior to the movement to ascertain successful migration.

Upfront planning not only decreases the duration of migration process but also

reduces business impact and that risks involved (associated with application

downtime, performance degradation, data loss or corruption and technical

incompatibilities.