Orchestrating a Complex Data Migration Using TransitionManager - Video

Data center migrations are a significant undertaking for any organization. As any client can attest, they are large, complicated projects to plan and manage, requiring disparate business units to work together to make a move successful.

Through the course of these complex projects, unexpected hurdles are inevitable, either through business changes or the discovery of previously unknown factors uncovered during the Discovery process. These highly visible projects too often go over budget or end up behind schedule.

Transitional Data Services, which has specialized in data center migrations for the past 19 years, has found most companies face similar challenges:

• First, they don’t trust their own knowledge of their IT infrastructure and their application and server interdependencies.
• Second, they are uncertain how to validate the accuracy and currency of their data.
• And finally, they don’t have experience or access to the best tools and methodologies for managing such complex projects.

Unfortunately, when IT teams start to really look at the complexities involved, and realize how much they don’t know, they find themselves in state of paralysis – and opportunities to really transform their infrastructure are left incomplete.

To address these challenges, the TDS team of migration consultants leverage their unique TransitionManager software to orchestrate all the essential phases of a complex data migration.

Discovery: Getting a Clear View of Your IT Infrastructure

TDS first helps companies gain a clear view of their IT infrastructure, including all assets and dependencies, using the TransitionManager software. All gathered data from a variety of providers (including auto-discovery tools, application lists, and even spreadsheets) is then in a centralized, accurate and up to date repository.

The TDS team then uses the tool to streamline the notoriously difficult and time-consuming process of validating assets. Information is gathered quickly and then confirmed through brief interviews with subject matter experts, often capturing tribal knowledge about the applications and their dependencies unexposed by auto-discovery tools.

Data Migration Analysis & Planning

With a centralized and accurate source now established, TransitionManager gives IT teams confidence in their decision making about the migration. It makes it easy to determine logical move groups or bundles and then view detailed maps of the assets and their dependencies and determine which IT assets must move together.

Orchestrating the many tools, vendors and staff involved in a complex migration requires a centralized program management platform.

TransitionManager creates a step-by-step plan for execution and ensures collaboration throughout the process by assigning tasks to staff and monitoring progress via real-time dashboards. It validates downtime windows for each event and generates automated runbooks to ensure all shutdown, migration and start-up procedures are sequenced properly. The web-based functionality allows teams to work independently on sequenced, key steps all while tracking their activities.

Execution

The rigor of the discovery, analysis and planning process will lead to an accelerated and efficient migration event – on average reducing migration time by 50%.

It enables project managers to delegate detailed tasks to the software while retaining command and control of the overall project. Clear task ownership, timely communication, and full visibility throughout the process significantly improves the team’s ability to respond quickly, factor in those inevitable changes that erupt, and continue with the planned migration.

Interested in seeing TransitionManager in action for yourself?