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    When a Small Data Migration Project Turns into a Big One

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    Tue, 11.15.2016, 06:20 AM

    Without the Right Tools, Complex File and Folder Structures Will Sidetrack Date Migration Projects

    Appearances can be deceiving. This popular idiom applies to many circumstances in IT as well, including data migration projects where overall size of the data set seems to get most of the attention. At a gathering of migration project managers you would likely hear a lot of chatter about high profile projects they recently managed quickly followed by how many Terabytes or even Petabytes were transitioned. The bigger the number, the better it is in their eyes. Over time these project managers have developed a number of best practices and grown comfortable with the tools they use to help them deliver projects that continue to expand in size and complexity.

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    So, what happens when a project estimate for migrating a modest amount of data indicates that it will take months to complete unless the customer is willing to incur a significant amount of system downtime? Even using different backup and data replication tools that were on hand did not change the calculations. In the real world, projects like this stall and get put on hold until more analysis can be completed. Paralysis by analysis sets in, project schedules slip, and nobody is happy.

    How TD Auto Finance solved their Migration Problem 

    Let’s take a look at a recent example of a migration project with similar characteristics that was dead in the water. Here is a quick overview of what the migration team was looking at:

    • Source: Windows Server with Dell RAID storage
    • 2.5TB of data
    • 100MB WAN connection
    • 64,000,000+ files
    • 300,000+ folders
    • Target: NetApp FAS3250 utilizing Data ONTAP 8.1.2 (7-Mode)
    • The application is mission critical and the customer requires minimal system downtime

    On the surface this didn’t seem like a huge project. After ruling out factors such as the WAN connection, server performance and performance of the source and target systems, the project team determined that the bottleneck was the data replication tools they were trying to use to manage moving data from the source to the target system. They concluded that the large number of files and folders were not being processed efficiently by their respective scanning engines which caused a slow data transfer rate that ultimately delayed project estimates. It turns out that there are numerous solutions available for backing up or replicating large data sets, but most are performance challenged when confronted with a vast number of files, folders and objects.

    The solution for this scenario was simply picking the right data management tool for the job, in this case it was PeerSync. The difference maker was PeerSync’s high performance scanning and real-time replication technology that enabled the migration team to scan the data set one time and let PeerSync’s real-time replication capabilities maintain a data replica on the target system. Confident that the target system was being kept up-to-date, the project team was able to greatly simplify cutover planning and execution. Originally estimated to take several weeks, this project was delivered over a weekend.

    Check it out yourself. Download the case study of TD Auto Finance and see how they dealt with their “Migration Impossible”. While we can’t guarantee that your next client will take you out for a post-migration celebration, we can confirm that the project team at TD Bank enjoyed theirs.