This tip originally appeared on SearchStorage.com, a sister site of SearchSMB.com.
What you will learn from this tip: Data migration is an effective way cut costs. Find out what you can do to simplify the migration process and start saving now.
With the help of automated file migration software -- the cornerstone of information lifecycle management (ILM) -- IT shops are finding they can go much longer before having to add disk capacity to their primary storage systems.
"We found that in the first 18 months [of putting in place an ILM strategy], we didn't have to upgrade our primary storage once," reports Chris Johnson, network administrator at Mustang Engineering L.P. in Houston. A Network Appliance shop, the firm is using File Lifecycle Manager from NuView to migrate inactive files from high-end filers to an ATA-based NearStore. So far, Mustang has migrated approximately 6 million files, totaling 4 terabytes (TB), to NearStore.
Similarly, Quicken Loans, a Livonia, MI-based online home financing lender, recently celebrated its one-year anniversary of using EMC Legato DiskXtender plus EMC ControlCenter (ECC) to migrate older files. In that year, the firm didn't need to add capacity to its primary storage tier. "Because we move files off the high-performance disk, we recoup that space," says Scott Roemmele, SAN engineer team leader.
After a year of monitoring its storage usage and developing file migration policies using Arkivio's auto-stor, the federal manufacturing and technologies division of Honeywell expects to recoup approximately 80% of the Hitachi Thunder and Lightning SAN array capacity assigned to unstructured file data. Approximately 5 TB of those files will be migrated to an EMC Centera content-addressed storage (CAS) device. "Unstructured data makes up the majority of our data," says Matt Decker, the division's lead systems engineer. "This will help a lot."
These examples are fairly typical of environments that have deployed automated file migration software. File migration software "forces you to have better discipline" about what types of files deserve to live on what class of storage, says Tony Asaro, senior analyst at Enterprise Storage Group (ESG), Milford, MA.
For example, Quicken Loans spreads the 6.5 TB of file data it has under management across three basic tiers: new files and files that have been accessed in the last 90 days reside on a primary Symmetrix array, while documents that have been accessed between 90 and 180 days go on a Clariion with ATA drives. Any files that haven't been accessed in 180 days go into deep archive storage on an EMC Centera. Quicken's internal customers, meanwhile, are blissfully unaware of where a file resides -- they just see a stub. "This has allowed us to keep a lot more data online," says Roemmele.
Before putting DiskXtender and ECC in place, Quicken Loans put the vast majority of its files on Symmetrix and just left them there. "We were just letting the beast grow and grow and grow," says Roemmele. Eventually, "we came to the realization that we needed to buy less-expensive disk."
ESG's Asaro claims that even with the additional cost of file migration software, you'll still save money by moving data from tier-one to tier-two disk, which is priced at approximately 60% of primary storage.
However, if you're architecting in a new tier of storage, that may translate into some new upfront costs. "I always say that ILM is a strategy," says Honeywell's Decker. "It's a little bit expensive up front, but down the road, it's the most intelligent thing you can do." Otherwise, he says, "you're going to suffer with compliance issues and silly spending on additional resources."
According to Buzz Walker, VP of marketing and business development at Arkivio, environments that see the most benefit from migrating data off primary storage have a minimum of 3 TB to 5 TB of unstructured primary data -- "after that point the benefits are just exponential," he says.
But environments with less data can also save big by clearing out old data, Walker says, notably around backup optimization. "That's where the cost justification is the strongest," he adds.
When it comes to inactive files, "you already have one good backup, why do you need another?" Walker asks. If those inactive files are moved to a second tier of disk, IT administrators can recalibrate their backup policies and back up less frequently, thereby saving money on tape media, drives and offsite storage. It goes without saying that completing your backups within your window suddenly gets much easier. "Now, on my primary storage, I can hit my windows whereas I couldn't before," says Walker.
Meanwhile, storage vendors are bracing themselves for sales of primary disk to be affected, says Asaro. "It's an eventuality they understand and are preparing for." But there may be a silver lining: What vendors lose in the short term to cheap storage sales, they may make up in the long run by locking customers into their storage brands.
"That's the beauty of [a product like EMC's] Centera," says Asaro. "We used to worry about [a] three-year lock-in, but with retention times of seven years or 30 years, now you're locked in for that much longer."
