Data Center Migration – Planning for Success

Introduction

Data center migration refers to moving data from one device to another. For IT managers, data migration has become one of the most routine and challenging tasks. Workload balancing, technology upgrade, server and storage consolidation, data center relocation, data classification, and mergers/acquisitions are all drivers to move data from one storage device to another on a regular basis.

Many factors can precipitate the need for a data center migration – growth beyond current capacities, hosting provider performance, real estate changes, local data center economics, density requirements, staffing considerations, green initiatives, etc.

Business, technical, and operational requirements impose challenging restrictions on the migration process. Resource demands (staff, CPU cycles, bandwidth) and risks (application downtime, performance impact to production environments, technical incompatibilities, and data corruption/loss) make migration one of the biggest challenges in maintaining IT infrastructure.

Planning for Success

A data center migration is one of the most critical and complex IT tasks organizations are faced with today. The margin for error is near zero and the move timeline is typically short positioning the migration project as a high risk and stress filled endeavor. To minimize the risks of unexpected downtime, interruption to revenue, and customer satisfaction losses, the migration project must be properly planned and flawlessly executed. 3

The migration plan, the end result of the planning, defines what data is moved, where it is moved, how it is moved, when it is moved, and approximately how long the move will take.

Creation of a Migration Plan 4

The migration plan, which is the end deliverable of the planning phase, functions as the blueprint for the implementation of migration. It specifies customer expectations, defining project deliverables, and identifying migration methodologies to be used. There are four major inputs into the migration plan:

  • Business and operational requirements which provide the constraints
  • Data to be migrated with all associated attributes
  • Available migration tools
  • Storage and application best practices

It is often quite challenging to create a workable migration plan. Different types of data may require different migration tools and strategies, and business and operational requirements.

Migration Project Phases 5

  1. Gather Requirements: Business objectives, resources required, and specific details of the project should be organized and documented. The documentation serves as a valuable information resource to guide and develop the project plan, provide business communication, and backup material for budgetary justification.
  2. Develop Plan: Data center migration projects require advanced planning and consideration of every aspect of the move process. One needs to gather data, document the project plan, identify potential problem areas and develop contingencies, compile task completion checklists from the project plan to be used during the migration phase and develop end-to-end test plans.
  3. Implement: Migration typically begins with communication to the organization and pre-migration preparations work.  An effective implementation involves;
  • Keep the migration as smooth as possible and on schedule:
  • Scheduling a trial run prior to the migration to uncover potential issues
  • Communicate with the move team and backup resources to ensure full resource availability.
  • Follow the plan precisely to prevent missed steps and out of sequence errors.
  • Document the work as each task is completed
  1. Validate: The final phase of the migration project verifies that all tasks have been completed, recovery or contingency procedures are documented, and communication is in place with all affected departments or groups.

Although the migration plan is the end deliverable of the planning phase, it is dynamic rather than a static document. Variables in the environment can change, or execution can lead to unexpected results, thus impacting the migration plan as documented.

Conclusion

Although the ultimate goal of data migration is to move data, it requires upfront planning prior to the movement in order to ensure a successful migration. In fact, planning is the number-one success factor for any migration project irrespective of the complexity. Not only does upfront planning help shorten the duration of the migration process, but reduces business impact and risk as well — for example, application downtime, performance degradation, technical incompatibilities, and data corruption/loss.

3www2.teamsilverback.com
4DATA MIGRATION BEST PRACTICES. NetApp Global Services . January 2006
5www2.teamsilverback.com