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dynaMigs.net migration methods

Big tasks require competent partners

Moving of 8 petabytes within one year in 20 countries

A large German automobile corporation replaced all its NAS servers from Dell-EMC VNX to Dell-EMC Unity. A partner had to be found to move over 380 frames with more than 2000 virtual servers within the shortest amount of time. The company placed great value on data validation and verification safety.

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Challenges

problems with umlauts
  • Umlaut problems through different code pages: Since umlauts have been displayed differently in the past, collisions and incorrect representations are unavoidable in old records, specifically also in the multi-protocol environment or when converting to NFSv4
  • Umlauts “bloated” during the conversion and created illegal file names (descriptions are too long).
  • Frequency: very high (approx. 10% of NFS migrations)
exports when converting from NFSv3 to NFSv4
  • The legal models of both versions are very different.
  • For nested exports, client access had to be considered for every export above this.
  • The rights in the file system also played a role and had to be adjusted.
  • Frequency: high (approximately 1% of NFS migrations)
cold database
  • Some applications (for example SAP) created hundreds of millions of files that were not migratable in a traditional manner.
  • Directories with several million files were more or less non-responsive on a VNX (listing files per directory can take hours).
  • Link loops led to canceled copy runs.
  • Faulty applications created large data structures with high nesting depth. These could no longer be accessed.
  • Massive use of hard links under NFS (The FS may have had “only” 25 million files, the copy tool found 170 million files).
  • Frequency: everywhere
DFS links
  • Since sub-directories were simultaneously targets of (D)DFS links, all source systems that link to the target were changed.
  • If the source system uses wide links, these must initially be found and translated into DFS links. It can be very difficult to find wide links.
  • If it is copied into a DFS namespace, there is a significant risk that data that does not appear to be related to the database may be deleted or modified.
  • Frequency: High (approx. 10% of CIFS migrations)
caching effects
  • Windows cached larger portions of the data during a copying process without the copying tool being able to influence this. If network instability occurs, the target file is written corrupt. Since the time stampand file size correspond to the source object, the file will not not copied again and remains on the target with errors.
  • The problem is related to protocols and cannot be avoided.
  • Frequency: high (approx. 1% of CIFS migrations
Solutions
  • IP replication (block-based copy of the file systems of the VDM)
  • IMT (Unity Inband Migration Tool): migration without downtime, if applicable
  • classic file-based migration
  • independently developed scanning tool for data validation
  • detection of potential problems and mistakes in advance
  • specific Log-analysis identifys Caching effects
Advantages
  • migration environment was provided to the company for later operational migrations
  • regular maintenance and support by dynaMigs.net
  • change management for operations during and after migration
  • creation of tools to record and monitor new systems for customers
  • documented data validation
  • cost reduction through integration of an offshore team