Cirrus Data Solutions
Successful Strategies for Non-Disruptive Data Migration

Moving data to a new SAN storage system can be both disruptive and risky. Data is probably a company’s single most important asset. Enterprises demand continual availability of their data for efficient operation. Any significant disruptions during data migration can bring about costly application downtime or performance degradation. At the same time, deploying the migration tool often requires changes in the application servers and the storage arrays. “IT administrators face the competing priorities of ensuring on-time completion of the migration project while also keeping the overall cost, risk and downtime or performance impacts under tight control,” begins Wayne Lam, Founder and CEO of Cirrus Data Solutions.

Cirrus Data Solutions was created to address this major issue with automated data management and optimization. “Our patented Transparent Datapath Intercept (TDI) technology offers enormous flexibility for deploying migration appliances or data caching appliances without downtime and without changes to existing infrastructure—significantly reducing overall business impact and risk,” asserts Lam. It uses standard storage HBA ports to create a transparent data path as a virtual cable. Built with the patented TDI technology, Cirrus Data Solutions offers its flagship products Data Migration Server (DMS) and Data Caching Server (DCS) appliance to seamlessly migrate or accelerate data.

One of the major storage players in the enterprise market, IBM, leverages the Cirrus Data DMS, a proven data migration solution, to successfully move petabytes of data with zero downtime until cutover. DMS works with any cloud, host OS, hypervisor, application, storage, location–from or to legacy FC SAN, virtual environment, and IBM SoftLayer. The Cirrus DMS is a transparent tool that is ideal for use cases including: local storage migration (storage refresh), remote data center migration (DC consolidation or move), and physical to virtual (legacy to cloud transformation) conversions. “Consolidating separate data centers is easy with DMS, no matter how much data you have or how many clients’ hosts you serve,” asserts Lam. The firm also integrates compression and encryption capabilities into the DMS for delivering secure and efficient remote data migration.

Consolidating separate data centers is easy with DMS, no matter how much data you have or how many clients’ hosts you serve

In addition, Cirrus Data Solutions can speed up SAN data access tenfold using its in-fabric DCS appliance. “Leveraging TDI technology, DCS allows live insertion of interception points into the data path of fibre channel links—host and the storage, causing zero downtime and without requiring any changes to the host, switch, and storage,” points out Lam. “This also eliminates all the work and risk associated with deployment of cache at the host or FC switch.”

Lam is proud to be a part of IBM’s synergy in driving fast, efficient and secure data migrations. The DMS solution enables IBM Professional Services teams to deliver more efficient data migration projects.

Apart from this, Lam points-out that Software Defined Storage (SDS), has quickly gained popularity in the enterprise storage community; which typically includes a form of storage virtualization to help IT pros use their storage more efficiently without limiting them to a single storage vendor or platform. In addition to the complex technology concepts and theories, Lam is mindful of the mission at Cirrus Data. “We constantly remind ourselves to focus on what is truly important. Cirrus Data was created to bring concrete, precise solutions to our customers that control operational complexities and costs with useful enterprise data storage technologies,” concludes Lam.