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Migration Level 2: Rehosting Your Data
Data Migration: Its Not Easy
Migration Level 2: Rehosting Your Data
Throughout the '90s IT professionals overcame obstacle after obstacle in bringing low cost, previously departmental level servers to the forefront of their infrastructure. As each year passed, we saw more and more new applications leaving the market dominated by mainframes for the last 25 years. The new millennium brings with it the next step in this progression, rehosting the applications currently run on low to mid level mainframe class processors.
Largely targeting Big Blue, companies like Sun Microsystems have been scurrying to acquire the knowledge to build these non-mainframe environments with a direct focus on their customer's pocket books. So what is the key to rehosting? Making it just that, simply changing hosts. Through acquisitions of companies such as Critical Path in 2001 and internal development, Sun now offers the ability to transport CICS applications to Solaris environments - with no code changes. Rehosting had previously hit major roadblocks in the costs and risks associated with rewriting entire business critical applications for a new host platform.
What's left to stop you from moving your operations to lower cost, Unix based solutions? Proprietary applications. One of the biggest offenders is a staple in most mainframe shops, IBM's DFSMSHSM software. HSM, often the largest tape user in mainframe environments, allows storage managers to easily manage the availability of data throughout its life cycle - even as the users requirements for it change. For the most part, the data managed by HSM has high usage and availability requirements early in its life cycle that dwindles to a simple requirement to maintain remote accessibility for an extended period of time. This means that data managed by HSM is usually required to be kept for years, whether it is driven by internal requirements or government standards.
HSM is tightly integrated with the mainframe operating systems (MVS to z/OS), so what happens to all this data when the mainframe processing moves to midrange servers? At this current time, nothing...not even the ability to read the data elsewhere. Due to customer requirements, eMag has embarked on deciphering the tape format to allow users to recall data from HSM, from NT, and Unix environments. Those of you familiar with our MediaMerge/PC software have seen the vast number of formats we read already, but the extension of HSM input capabilities is a much more in depth integration.
MM/PC code will be the base for us to integrate reading HSM tapes as well as integrating the MCDS (HSM's proprietary catalog for tracking "active" datasets). The MCDS is key to locating the current, active version of a given file. By the end of Q1 2003, users will have the ability to perform individual recalls or mass migrations from Windows NT, 2000, and Sun Solaris based servers.
A previously unavailable option, this will be one more roadblock removed from the rehosting effort. Contact us today to learn more about rehosting your data.
Data Migration: Its Not Easy
Are you looking to save money by migrating from an OS/390 to a Unix environment? Are you looking to improve efficiencies by migrating from DLT to LTO? Regardless of the reasons when a company makes the decision to undergo a major expansion or consolidation, data migration is one of the critical IT issues that needs to be planned for and addressed. Data migration is the process of moving static or preexisting long-term retention data to a newer technology, and to describe it as complex may be an understatement. It is time consuming, labor intensive, logistically problematic and can incur substantial downtime if not done properly.
Data migration is not something that occurs daily, and so the process often requires a temporary need for additional expertise, software or consulting and equipment. Administrators and application developers generally work with consultants to determine the criteria for migrating files, and a process is created which although is fairly straightforward can be quite involved. A well-planned data migration process will involve the following:
- Research the current environment and the goals to determine the source-to-target data relationships that need to be migrated
- Determine all pre-installation requirements
- Audit all devices and CPUs to provide complete documentation of the network
- Manage other vendors who are crucial to the process
- Develop a comprehensive project and test plan
- Construction and deployment of all necessary equipment and software
- Accurate refinement of the data migration process. Note: The process often requires additional refinements and the key to a successful data migration process is to make subsequent refinements more complete than the last
- Testing and validation to provide complete quality assurance of the data migration process
Although, as we stated above, the process is complex, once it is completed a successful data migration will provide numerous benefits including:
- Reduces cost
- Allows you to take advantage of newer technologies
- Provides effective utilization of primary storage disk space
- Automation of data life cycle management operations
- Allows you to virtualize and consolidate storage resources
- Reduces data management overhead
- Allows for comprehensive management of data across all departments and data centers
eMag offers turnkey mainframe and midrange data migration services and software. We provide you with a transparent data migration process that is cost effective, that will minimize the impact on your daily operations, reduce the risk and ensure overall project quality and success and ultimately provide a faster return on your investment. Contact us today to learn more about our data migration services.
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