By James E. Gaskin
Moving is always a hassle, and moving data is no different. So when talking about data migration, get organized and test processes before committing.
Smaller businesses keep data on servers and workstations until something forces them to upgrade. “The triggering point for moving to shared storage is almost always virtualization,” says Bob Laliberte, senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) research firm. “You need networked storage in order to take advantage of server mobility features.”
Managing secure access when moving from server to network storage doesn’t have to be difficult. “If you’re moving from a Windows server to a network-attached storage [NAS] device running Windows Storage Server, your Active Directory tree may provide enough security,” says Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst at The StorageIO Group. “Enable encryption on the NAS, at least, and this type of data migrationis almost painless.”
Moving from NAS to a storage area network (SAN) adds complexities. Because security and access controls can be stripped off in the transfer, “you need to double check your security and access-control settings when you move from a file-based NAS to a block-based SAN,” says Schulz.
The other major data migration target is a public or private cloud. In ESG’s most recent spending survey, for example, increasing virtualization and managing data growth were the top two topics. “[And] the cloud and SaaS were our two fastest climbers in importance between 2010 and 2011,” says Laliberte.
That doesn’t mean moving data skyward is easy. “There are big issues getting data up to a cloud,” says Schulz. “If you don’t have too much data, you can transfer it over the network. But for large amounts, you’ll need to transfer it to disks, and then send those disks to your cloud provider.”
The same advice is true when the data comes back down, says Laliberte. “Getting a single file from a backup is easy. Getting a server’s worth of data may take four days over the network, so cloud providers will send your data on a hard disk. The best data migrationmedium for large amounts of data may still be FedEx.”
Moving data to a cloud is more complicated than from a server to networked storage. “Do a pilot,” says Schulz. “Many times, especially with a cloud, I have to copy data to the cloud and verify the data before deleting the network version.” Schulz’s advice? “Move to cloud storage in steps. Start a cloud backup project and copy local data to the cloud. When up and running, you’ve migrated your data.”
Luckily, migrating data from cloud service to cloud service is rare. “Changing cloud providers is a royal pain,” says Schulz.
Source: ChannelPro SMB -http://www.channelprosmb.com/article/28170/Data-Migration-Best-Practices/?highlight=data+migration
