the storage anarchist

2.022: free migrations

As the beginning of Fall approaches in North America, much of our wildlife prepares for their annual migratory trip south to warmer climes.

What better time to announce the No-Charge Symmetrix Migrator Package?

Effective this month, this new package provides both current and new V-Max and DMX customers with free licenses to three powerful storage migration utilities:

1. Open Migrator, for host-based migrations. Runs on most popular operating systems and server cluster software. OM can mount the new target LUN(s), copy data (on another array or from within the platform itself) in the background, and it will mirror writes to both old and new storage during the migration;
2. SRDF/DM (Data Mobility), Symmetrix-based replication frequently used to make a mirror of current Symmetrix volumes onto a new array before swapping the hosts over to the new storage. Used by customers for more than a decade to effect both Open Systems and Mainframe data migrations;
3. Open Replicator/LM (Live Migration), array-based "hot pull" migration for Open Systems hosts. Simply insert the new Symmetrix into the SAN in between the hosts and their current storage array(s). LUNs are copied off of the old storage in the background, while any host reads or writes are moved to the head of the queue for maximum efficiency. Works to migrate data into a Symmetrix from virtually any SAN-based storage platform, and it can even move a small existing LUN into a larger one in the process.

As with the recently announced FREE status for Symmetrix Virtual Provisioning, this new package comes with only one string: you have to own or purchase a Symmetrix DMX or V-Max. Other than that it is truly no-additional-charge. Customers can take advantage of these new tools immediately upon arrival of their system (or license keys), without concern for the amount of capacity they want to move (or Virtually Provision).

Yet another way that EMC is helping to reduce the TCO and expand the use cases of Symmetrix, the enterprise storage market share leader for nearly 20 years.

Enjoy!

 

technorati tags: EMC,Symmetrix,V-Max,DMX,Virtual Provisioning,Symmetrix Migrator Package,FREE,No-Charge,Open Replicator/LM,Open Migrator,SRDF/DM,data migration,tech refresh

0.035: hitachi drops another shoe (it sounded like a slipper!)

I guess I should be ashamed. Embarrassed at least.

Yesterday, someone asked me why I hadn't yet commented here about Hitachi's baby USP-VM announcement made earlier this week, and I responded "what announcement?"

Yep. I missed it. Completely.

Not that I wasn't aware it was coming...Mr. T doesn't make the rounds on Wall Street on the arms of HDS PR folks for nothing, nor do you wake poor old Claus from his year-long blogging hiatus unless something really important is about to happen.

As I had prior blognosticated, there were (and still are) gaping holes in the initial USPV announcement - clearly the team back in Japan had much more in mind than had been announced back in May. And at least a few rumors indicated that many of these would make it through the QA gauntlet before the end of Q3'07.

Guess this stuff really is hard for everyone.

So I guess because I'd expected so much more, the actual announcement of the USPV "mini-me" slipped right under my radar. I probably shouldn't have taken Nigel's advice and stopped stalking HHSNBN (although it has been therapeutic not to read about yet another world calamity that UVM can solve for a couple of weeks, mind you).

But now that mini-me has been brought to my attention, you just know I have to comment. Interestingly though, this time I'm not alone in correcting the typical misleading marketing that the Hitachi Data Systems Santa Clara marketing miscreants have become known for.

It seems I have some new friends in my quest to keep things honest.