Top Three Things to Know Before You Migrate to Clustered Data ONTAP

iii. Performance – NetApp has reported unparalleled performance of up to 1.5 million IOPs with multiple nodes of a cDOT cluster. As of today a cDOT system can scale up to 24 nodes. This is a drastic change from the 2 node systems that customers are used to running applications on with the traditional Data ONTAP systems.

iv. R&D and Innovation – It has been made clear by NetApp that most of R&D and future developments will focus on the cDOT code base even though the traditional 7-mode code will still be supported for many years to come.

Now that you know the reasons behind the hype, do you know if clustered Data ONTAP is right for your business? I’ll leave it up to you to decide when the best time to migrate is – you can also discuss this with your technology partner to make this decision.

It is important to understand what is being migrated, not just in bits and bytes but all the way into how this data maps into applications and have an impact on the business. This is critical to ensure that IT can fulfill the SLAs to the business during this transition. Most organizations have some idea of what their applications are dependent on other applications, but in cases where a more detailed analysis is required, performing a detailed application mapping will go a long way in understanding ahead of time, a good picture of the landscape before venturing into the actual migration. NetApp being a unified platform, it is important to know the dependencies from a file as well as block data perspective.

i. Files – It is important to understand the types of files, the storage capacity of these files as well as how many files are there under each folder structure. In addition to this, it helps to know ahead of time how users and applications are accessing this data. This is important to ensure that migration happens smoothly and that the access to the data for users and application is seamless after the migration is complete.

ii. Block data – Block data is typically application based data (LUNs), and by nature migrating block data has inherent complexity because of the nature of how it serves the various applications – so it is important to migrate data from an application perspective rather than from a storage perspective.

The last big item to think about is how the data will be migrated. There are umpteen numbers of methods to move the data successfully and this is different for every environment and every application.

i. There are tools provided by the application vendor (Oracle, Microsoft etc.)
ii. There are tools provided by NetApp to migrate to cDOT
iii. There are third party software and hardware appliance based tools to complete this transformation.

No matter which mix of technology is used for the migration to cDOT, what is important to understand is that this migration is a gradual process, not an overnight change. Following best practices during the migration, as well as ensuring that best practices are followed while implementing the cDOT systems is critical. What we have seen at Datalink is that along with the technologies used for migration, the people involved with the migration also play a huge part – communication is critical. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of project management, establishing clear lines of communication,  and decision making during the migration process.

Whether you have decided that cDOT is the way to go or are in the early stages of contemplating the move to cDOT, consider these recommendations in order to make the migration a success -- with the least amount of disruption possible to the business. And when in doubt, seek an experienced data migration partner who understands not only the technical intricacies of performing a clustered Data ONTAP migration, but also one who can lower your risk and understands the importance of data availability for your business.