ACADEMIA
New SAN-based SGI solution allows seamless data migration
By Moving Migration, Data Services and Storage Management to the Network, SGI Makes Storage More Flexible and Cost-Effective: SGI today unveiled the SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution, which gives enterprises the freedom to migrate their data to any standards-based storage environment. Unlike traditional data migration solutions, which may keep customers locked in to specific vendor platforms, the Virtualized Storage Migration Solution allows enterprises to choose the storage device that best suits their needs – an advantage that can lead to better data utilization and significantly lower ownership costs. The new SGI solution also allows enterprises to migrate data without disrupting enterprise applications or operations. 
“Although market forces have put an end to the era of proprietary computing platforms, many storage vendors attempt to lock their customers into a single storage platform, drastically limiting choice and inevitably increasing cost of ownership,” said Ravi Pendekanti, senior director, worldwide solutions marketing, SGI. “With the SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution, we’re bringing the flexibility and cost advantages of open standards-based computing to the storage space. Now organizations can move their data to any new storage device without impacting operations, and without risking the integrity of their enterprise data.”
Virtualized Storage Migration Made Easy
Storage virtualization – which provides a common way of allocating and managing different storage resources – has grown more popular in recent years. But many virtualization tools have had difficulty keeping up with increasingly complex IT environments.
The new SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution improves the way storage virtualization is done by moving volume migration, advanced data services and storage management onto storage area networks (SANs). The SGI solution leverages LSI StoreAge virtualization technology. The StoreAge management software centralizes management of the organization’s SANs, and the solution allows users to migrate data simply by indicating a source volume and a destination storage pool. Rollback capabilities allow IT administrators to recover from any migration until they are fully satisfied that data has transferred successfully.
“This SAN-based solution from SGI should help enterprises that are looking to respond more rapidly to changing business and operational conditions by making their existing storage infrastructure significantly more flexible,” said Mark Peters, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “When you add ‘heterogeneous’ to ‘migration’ and ‘tiering,’ you have a compelling proposition that permits data movement between platforms and to any available storage device that is optimum for your business needs; adding ease of use through a simplified methodology opens the door wider to improved agility and lower costs.”
Independence from Vendor Lock-In
The SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution has another advantage: Because it provides a single common toolset across multiple SANs and other storage platforms, the solution allows organizations to migrate data from any storage device to any other. At the same time, IT administrators can choose how much of their current environment they wish to migrate, deploying as much or as little new storage as necessary. This can save enterprises significant up-front costs by not having to invest in large-scale, Tier 1 storage platforms. They also avoid having to integrate all devices at once to the Virtualized Storage Migration environment.
Organizations also avoid the cost and disruptions of lost access to enterprise applications and data because they can migrate data to any device at any location – all while production applications remain online and operational.
These advantages proved compelling for Iridium Satellite LLC, the only mobile satellite service offering gap-free, pole-to-pole coverage over the entire globe. To meet its rapidly growing data warehousing demands, Iridium recently deployed the SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution to migrate its mission-critical enterprise data from an EMC CX 500 array to a new SGI InfiniteStorage 4500 solution.
“The ability to migrate to any device and any storage platform is significant,” said Tad Martin, UNIX systems administrator at Iridium. “In evaluating our options, we looked at an upgrade and migration path with EMC, but staying with them would have meant a sizable cost increase. On top of that, it was clear we were going to have downtime for a significant number of servers in our environment, and I didn’t want to expose our business to those risks. We selected the SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution because SGI offered clearly superior price/performance with the InfiniteStorage 4500 and a virtualization component that was literally unbeatable. No other vendor presented virtualization we considered workable – and certainly nothing this good.”
Access to Advanced Data Services
Migrating data with the SGI solution reduces complexity and simplifies operations by allowing customers to take advantage of advanced data services at the storage network layer and to provide those services to any supported host, server, or storage platform. For instance, the solution makes it easy to place data on the storage platform that best fits the needs of the data or application at any given moment. As data ages, it can be automatically migrated from more expensive Tier 1 storage to a less costly Tier 2 array.
The new solution also gives enterprises access to more advanced data services that typically are available only through costly Tier 1 storage platforms. Services such as replication, mirroring, disaster recovery, and rapid application recovery are all accessible with the SGI solution, and can be centrally managed via the SAN-based LSI StoreAge software.
The SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution is the latest addition to the company’s arsenal of scalable, high-performance storage solutions built specifically for data-intensive environments. Among these is the SGI InfiniteStorage Data Migration Facility (DMF), a powerful Information Lifecycle Management and archiving solution. Whereas DMF is designed for policy-based, file-level migration in multi-tier storage architectures, the new SGI solution is designed for block-level data migration between heterogeneous storage arrays.
Leveraging SGI Domain Expertise and Professional Services
The SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution, which includes hardware, software and services, is delivered, implemented and supported using unique SGI expertise that comes with solving large-scale data management problems for more than 25 years. The acclaimed SGI Professional Services organization serves as trusted advisor and consultant, ensuring that every implementation fits within the customer’s IT environment and maximizes their return on investment.
As a value-added service, SGI Professional Services assigns certified Project Management Professionals who closely manage each implementation from order to delivery, and who ensure that every project meets the customer’s scope, timeframe and budget.
For more information on the SGI Virtualized Data Migration Solution or any SGI InfiniteStorage solution, visit its Web site.
“Although market forces have put an end to the era of proprietary computing platforms, many storage vendors attempt to lock their customers into a single storage platform, drastically limiting choice and inevitably increasing cost of ownership,” said Ravi Pendekanti, senior director, worldwide solutions marketing, SGI. “With the SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution, we’re bringing the flexibility and cost advantages of open standards-based computing to the storage space. Now organizations can move their data to any new storage device without impacting operations, and without risking the integrity of their enterprise data.”
Virtualized Storage Migration Made Easy
Storage virtualization – which provides a common way of allocating and managing different storage resources – has grown more popular in recent years. But many virtualization tools have had difficulty keeping up with increasingly complex IT environments.
The new SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution improves the way storage virtualization is done by moving volume migration, advanced data services and storage management onto storage area networks (SANs). The SGI solution leverages LSI StoreAge virtualization technology. The StoreAge management software centralizes management of the organization’s SANs, and the solution allows users to migrate data simply by indicating a source volume and a destination storage pool. Rollback capabilities allow IT administrators to recover from any migration until they are fully satisfied that data has transferred successfully.
“This SAN-based solution from SGI should help enterprises that are looking to respond more rapidly to changing business and operational conditions by making their existing storage infrastructure significantly more flexible,” said Mark Peters, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “When you add ‘heterogeneous’ to ‘migration’ and ‘tiering,’ you have a compelling proposition that permits data movement between platforms and to any available storage device that is optimum for your business needs; adding ease of use through a simplified methodology opens the door wider to improved agility and lower costs.”
Independence from Vendor Lock-In
The SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution has another advantage: Because it provides a single common toolset across multiple SANs and other storage platforms, the solution allows organizations to migrate data from any storage device to any other. At the same time, IT administrators can choose how much of their current environment they wish to migrate, deploying as much or as little new storage as necessary. This can save enterprises significant up-front costs by not having to invest in large-scale, Tier 1 storage platforms. They also avoid having to integrate all devices at once to the Virtualized Storage Migration environment.
Organizations also avoid the cost and disruptions of lost access to enterprise applications and data because they can migrate data to any device at any location – all while production applications remain online and operational.
These advantages proved compelling for Iridium Satellite LLC, the only mobile satellite service offering gap-free, pole-to-pole coverage over the entire globe. To meet its rapidly growing data warehousing demands, Iridium recently deployed the SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution to migrate its mission-critical enterprise data from an EMC CX 500 array to a new SGI InfiniteStorage 4500 solution.
“The ability to migrate to any device and any storage platform is significant,” said Tad Martin, UNIX systems administrator at Iridium. “In evaluating our options, we looked at an upgrade and migration path with EMC, but staying with them would have meant a sizable cost increase. On top of that, it was clear we were going to have downtime for a significant number of servers in our environment, and I didn’t want to expose our business to those risks. We selected the SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution because SGI offered clearly superior price/performance with the InfiniteStorage 4500 and a virtualization component that was literally unbeatable. No other vendor presented virtualization we considered workable – and certainly nothing this good.”
Access to Advanced Data Services
Migrating data with the SGI solution reduces complexity and simplifies operations by allowing customers to take advantage of advanced data services at the storage network layer and to provide those services to any supported host, server, or storage platform. For instance, the solution makes it easy to place data on the storage platform that best fits the needs of the data or application at any given moment. As data ages, it can be automatically migrated from more expensive Tier 1 storage to a less costly Tier 2 array.
The new solution also gives enterprises access to more advanced data services that typically are available only through costly Tier 1 storage platforms. Services such as replication, mirroring, disaster recovery, and rapid application recovery are all accessible with the SGI solution, and can be centrally managed via the SAN-based LSI StoreAge software.
The SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution is the latest addition to the company’s arsenal of scalable, high-performance storage solutions built specifically for data-intensive environments. Among these is the SGI InfiniteStorage Data Migration Facility (DMF), a powerful Information Lifecycle Management and archiving solution. Whereas DMF is designed for policy-based, file-level migration in multi-tier storage architectures, the new SGI solution is designed for block-level data migration between heterogeneous storage arrays.
Leveraging SGI Domain Expertise and Professional Services
The SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution, which includes hardware, software and services, is delivered, implemented and supported using unique SGI expertise that comes with solving large-scale data management problems for more than 25 years. The acclaimed SGI Professional Services organization serves as trusted advisor and consultant, ensuring that every implementation fits within the customer’s IT environment and maximizes their return on investment.
As a value-added service, SGI Professional Services assigns certified Project Management Professionals who closely manage each implementation from order to delivery, and who ensure that every project meets the customer’s scope, timeframe and budget.
For more information on the SGI Virtualized Data Migration Solution or any SGI InfiniteStorage solution, visit its Web site. 