Tuesday, January 10, 2012

The Best Strategies for Migrating Data

By Jason Sloan


Information must be migrated from one location to another for a selection of reasons. A large amount of times, it may be as the hardware has failed or become outdated and info needs to be moved to a more recent computer. Or a company simply changes location, or more commonly, the info itself has become larger that some or the entire thing must be moved to additional array. Data migration, then, is a part of corporate expansion.

As information becomes bigger and more complicated, the process of info migration becomes more challenging and requires a totally distinct specialty of work. So came about the development of info migration consulting services which ensure proper management of info migration.

Correct information migration practices are a must because migration of information has its risks such as downtime and even data loss. There truly is no best method as it actually depends on a corporation's necessities such as down time, resource availability and the volume of data that must be migrated. The following strategies are the best ones in the field:

Online Migration

This method allows the information migration process to occur alongside the standard operations. The applications necessary to the company's operations are still running and online though in a slightly degraded condition. The technology behind this is literally capable of migrating the info in a way which is clear to the application which accesses the same information. Ultimately, online migration synchronizes both the source and destination of info, in which particular case all new writes go the new location.

Offline Migration

Offline migration is the exact opposite of the above methodology as information migration is done offline. It simply shuts down all of the environment, info are copied from the old to the new location and once the new location is in place , all pointers are then switched to the new location. The simple advantage of this strategy is the ease with which it can be carried out. The disadvantage is the long downtime which most firms cannot afford to endure.

Hybrid Migration

In fact, this technique is the most often employed. As an example, there may be a web information migration continuing that has few outages to switch between source and destination. This strategy represents a strategic compromise between the 1st 2 strategies.

Info migration is risky but obligatory at times. Delicate planning and well-thought-out implementation is a must to minimize effect on business.

As with all mechanical or electric devices, there's the danger of something going badly wrong during the information migration process. Instances such as power cuts, info corruption, or disk failure can leave corporations stranded with their info untouched between one or two locations. Should this occur, the services of a pro data recovery company should be in a position to assist in retrieving your information without reference to the circumstances in which it was lost.




About the Author:



No comments: