Best Practice: Migration Strategies

Transcription

1 US-Amplify Best Practice: Migration Strategies White Paper

2 Contents Executive Summary... 2 Project Scoping Stage... 2 Feasibility Study... 4 Definition Stage... 5 Design Stage... 5 Migration Sizing... 5 Migration Design... 6 Reporting Standards... 7 Execution... 7 Project Kickoff Call... 7 Timeline Discussion/Project Roles... 8 Closure... 9

3 Executive Summary migration projects are critical to an organization's business infrastructure. A poorly planned and poorly executed migration can lead to service disruption, archive corruption, and poor end user experience. Unfortunately, a majority of "best practice" guides tend to generalize the process and skip the most important steps of planning and disseminating information. administrators will find this white paper a valuable reference for planning and executing migrations, but also for communication practices during migrations. Project Scoping Stage Since data migration initiatives are often misunderstood and seen as another expenditure that does not produce an immediate ROI, it is important to properly scope out the project. In order for the project to run smoothly, it is crucial for the project manager to set appropriate expectations and answer the following: 1) What is your organization's desired timeline? Ask yourself, is now the best time to start this project or should you wait and upgrade to the newest version of software? 2) How will this project affect the end user experience? The key to any successful migration is to avoid any outages and downtime. Choosing the right data archive migration tools, which run in the

4 background and minimally impact the end user experience, simplifies the overall archive migration process. 3) What are the alternatives to migrate data archives? Why is the chosen solution the most viable? Most archiving solutions have a way to export archived data, but deciding which one offers a solution that will benefit your company. Choose a tool that provides efficient and cleaner extractions in addition to providing chain of custody reporting and message auditing. 4) What are the benefits of a migration? It is crucial that you explain to the stake holder why the migration will ultimately show a return on investment or positively impact other aspects of the business. Interoperability between systems is a clear benefit that is usually achieved after correctly executed migrations, however, precautions are taken when converting data from one format to the other. If not done properly, migrations can result in damaged information and noncompliance with company policies, not to mention disgruntled end users. Accurately planned and executed migrations improve organizational efficiency and end user experience by ensuring end users can quickly search all items in one environment. 5) What is your course of action? How are you going to perform this migration? Completing the preliminary planning requires understanding what data you are migrating, where it lives, what it looks like in the source and what you want it to look like in the destination. You need to decide whether the migration is going INTEROPERABILITY Between systems is a clear benefit that is usually achieved after correctly executed migrations, however, precautions are taken when converting data from one format to the other

5 to be handled in-house or completed by a third party provider. What tools are you going to utilize? 6) How are you going to distribute the course of action to the necessary stakeholders involved in the process? The easiest way is to incorporate this into a feasibility study that can be quickly disseminated and reviewed by the necessary stakeholders for project approval. Feasibility Study PERFORM AN INTEGRITY CHECK Most archive systems have the ability to verify integrity. Avoid future headaches by insuring data continuity prior to any migration. Perform a feasibility study to demonstrate in a concise manner why this initiative is necessary for the organization. Avoid an overly technical tone in the study, as its audience is business professionals, not IT experts. An effective feasibility study will include the following things: Executive summary that identifies the need for the project Scope of Project (identifying current and future environment, hardware and software requirements, what data to migrate first and last, which applications would be taken offline and for how long, what external and internal stakeholders should be notified) Strategy for implementing the project (general timeline, key personnel, software products, vendors, etc.) Cost of the project and its ROI Most importantly, expectations of the new system and how the process is essential to daily operations

6 Definition Stage The definition stage is essential for managing the expectations of the project stakeholders. After the project has been approved by a migration specialist and the feasibility study has been reviewed, any concerns or necessary goals that were introduced with regards to this project should be clearly documented and addressed prior to technical delivery. When neglected, the definition stage can lead to miscommunication and unnecessary frustration as the project begins to unravel. It is the responsibility of the project manager to produce a memo that specifies all related concerns and expectations of the stakeholders and IT Department. CONSIDERATIONS FOR PLANNING Things to keep in mind when planning: current migration polices in place that you must adhere to organization litigation standards compliance Design Stage Migration Sizing Determine what type of archival deduplication scheme is used by your current implementation. If the underlying storage architecture of your current archive is different from the storage architecture of the future system, you may soon face "data bloat. Data bloat occurs when you move data from enterprise archival system that utilizes Single- Instance deduplication scheme to one that does not. This data often requires three times as much space in a non-single instance deployment 1. Both EMC SourceOne and Symantec Enterprise Vault archive s are based on single instance on disk scheme, which 1 Average number of people per (To, CC, Self)

7 means that s sent to multiple people are stored only once in the archival process. However, many cloud solutions implement a multiinstance on disk scheme, which stores each per each mailbox, thereby bloating the data. If the possibility of data bloat has not been taken into account during the initiation stage, it could mean going over budget due to data requirements. Migration Design Perform an integrity check on your existing and backup systems. Resolve any data integrity problems, such as underlying RAID consistency issues, block level checksum mismatch, and database integrity errors as they may impact the migration. Determine which data will be migrated first depending on the availability. We advise migrating first older data that includes fired and resigned employees archives and then proceed with records of current personnel as archived data can be easily restored and does not necessarily impact current operations. The timeframe needed to migrate this data is obtained from your migration expert. Depending on your current implementation, your migration expert will advise you on additional steps. Create the migration architecture. Develop your test plan which includes sampling, selecting, and inspecting a subset of random data to ensure that migration was implemented as planned.

8 Develop your recovery plan. This would incorporate recovery options for every stage of migration. Develop your verification plan. This would focus on ensuring the consistency and accuracy of the transferred data. Reporting Standards Beside system reports, identify who should be kept up-to-date on the migration status, and how often. Successful implementation depends on communication. Be sure to ask your vendor about ways to automate this process, resulting in the fewer things you have to manage as you proceed with the migration. MIGRATE ARCHIVED DATA OF FORMER EMPLOYEES FIRST Migration of Archived Data of former employees prior to active users will help ensure the continuity of the system and migration process. Execution Project Kickoff Call The kickoff call is the first meeting between the migration team and the client with the goal of reviewing the scope of work and project flow. A suggested agenda is as follows: Formulate result the client seeks to achieve with migration Deliverables at every milestone of the project Potential bottlenecks that can arise at execution, particularly those that may affect files transfer schedule and lead to decreased client satisfaction Responsibilities of participating stakeholders Communication plan between the client and migration team

9 Review of the project milestones and creation of the initial project timeline Execution plan and project closeout The kickoff meeting presents the appropriate time to convey any expectations, confirm that all participating parties comprehend the project goals, deliverables, and milestones, and to review any questions pertaining to any service-level agreements (SLAs) in place. Timeline Discussion/Project Roles It is a good practice to specify the frequency of progress reports, and to whom they will be addressed. Clear definition of roles and tasks will expedite the process of finding the appropriate execution window for each phase, and ensure that all activities are accounted for. Communication is a key to scheduling each task of the migration. Completing the above tasks will provide a basis for a concrete migration schedule. Any potential changes throughout the execution phase should be reflected in the document and communicated to the migration specialist. Lastly, production of weekly reports is necessary as both the migration expert and the client can utilize the reports to assess the project s progress, and determine whether the migration is in need of additional resources.

10 Closure A project is not complete if the project manager has not submitted a formal project closure memo to the relevant stakeholders. If you decided to use migration experts, they will contact you for a final project review to discuss migration and chain-of-custody reports in detail, and will send a final project signoff to finalize the process. As a project manager, your report should document any issues and necessary deviations from the original plan. If this list is too technical or extensive for a project closure report, the location of subsequent documents that provide this information in detail will be included. This report will ensure that the stakeholders are informed of the project s completion.

11 About US-Amplify As a leading consulting firm with experienced and fully certified individuals, US-Amplify maintains the highest levels of partnership with Symantec, TransVault, Archive360, and Microsoft software companies to provide best-practice services around solving complex business needs. The team is here to help you. We look at every project as being unique and work with your team to develop a complete solution that will cater to your individual business needs. DALLAS, TEXAS 600 EAST LAS COLINAS BLVD. SUITE 2222 IRVING, TX INFO@US-AMPLIFY.COM USAS US-Amplify is a division of US-Analytics Solutions Group. US-Analytics is a full-service Oracle Hyperion consulting firm helping the nation's largest and brightest companies bridge the gap between goals and IT deliverables. If you have any business needs for Oracle enterprise performance management and business analytics, please visit