InMage Enables Successful, Seamless Large-Scale Data Migration Project

Applied Discovery is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, with its main data center located in south Seattle. The IT infrastructure comprises primarily Windows servers and storage systems from Hitachi Data Systems. The company needed to complete an internal data migration comprising about 170 servers and 250 to 300 TB of data. The expected timeframe for project completion was a year or more. Capacity expansion issues were the primary driver behind the data migration project. Applied Discovery was quickly running out of storage on its storage area networks (SAN) and had to move data onto new storage systems. Although the company used native replication tools, it would take some time since all the systems would have to be virtualized behind the new storage system.

"Once the native tool was used to move data to the new storage system, we would then have to detach and de-virtualize all the storage from each of the systems," said Kishore Dahlstrom, Systems and Storage Architect for Applied Discovery. "This process would add additional time to our migration plan. The native tool is extremely fast when moving data from one storage system to another once the storage is virtualized. But for this migration we felt that using InMage would be a better option."

Applied Discovery also had to find a way to migrate data without bringing down servers, incurring downtime, and negatively impacting the business. Note – both InMage and native tools required some downtime in order to prepare for the initial replication and after replication is completed.