How to migrate systems with confidence

Your business grows. New technologies emerge. Given enough time, operational and competitive pressures will inevitably force you to upgrade your IBM Power Systems servers. But the downtime typically required for migrating to new servers-anywhere from several hours to several days-can be disastrous for your company's productivity and profits. And in some cases, overtime costs and employee morale take a hit because upgrades and migrations generally occur during off hours or weekends to avoid interrupting business operations.

So what easy, affordable and innovative option would be a good fit for businesses upgrading their Power Systems technologies? Vision Solutions' Migrate While Active – it virtually eliminates potential risks traditionally associated with system upgrades and migrations that cause downtime. Continuous uptime lets companies maintain normal operations while essential upgrades and migrations occur. Migrate While Active uses Vision's replication and high availability technologies to rapidly copy business-critical data to the new IBM i or AIX server and keeps it synchronized with the production system in real-time. After validating the new environment, users and processes can be moved in minutes.

Downtime is just one of the migration hazards IT departments can encounter. Typically, IT departments race against the clock when performing server migrations, desperately trying to minimize the hours-or days-critical business applications are offline. Rushing through the process only makes it more error prone, which can lead to costly and disruptive mistakes or even more downtime.

How exactly does a business avoid downtime when migrating or upgrading Power Systems technologies? The process is easy: install the new server, let Migrate While Active synchronize the new system with the old, and then validate the new system while users work normally on the old one. Migrate While Active keeps the new system current by migrating changes from the old system as they happen. When the "switch is flipped," operations pick up on the new system exactly where they left off on the old one.

Maintaining fully synchronized old and new systems during a migration allows business operations to carry on unaffected while the IT staff runs tests, audits and other processes to verify objects on the new system prior to making the switch.

Migrate While Active mirrors all system-critical objects: data, user profiles, authorities, data areas, data queues, IFS files, programs, spool files, MQ and all other objects needed for a successful Power Systems upgrade or migration. When manually migrating to a new system, critical objects may be overlooked. If anything gets left behind, the new system might fail to function properly-or at all.

Migrate While Active works just as easily in many-to-one migrations as in one-to-one situations. Thus, users can easily consolidate multiple, independently administered machines onto a single, centrally administered system. Or, users can distribute applications and data to multiple IBM i or AIX environments.

Vision understands migrations can be complex so expert help is always available when needed. From start to finish, Vision personnel work closely with in-house IT staff to install and configure the software, enable and monitor synchronization, run multiple tests and perform the final switch to the new machine.

A global support and services team backs Migrate While Active. Plus, advanced tools and resources, including a comprehensive online knowledgebase and web-based screen sharing support guide IT leaders if questions should ever arise. Around the clock 'follow the sun' capabilities support businesses through a global network of Vision support specialists, so it does not matter where a company is located – expert help is always available.

Mike M. Khattab is Vision Solutions' vice president of sales for its growth markets wherein he oversees sales management and business development activities within the many growth markets of the Europe, Middle East and Africa regions. In addition to more than 15 years of sales experience in the high availability/disaster recovery technology sector, he has significant experience and background in both the technical and practical business aspects of business continuity and IT recovery. Mr. Khattab's expertise with diverse sales models and strategies consistently drives increased revenue and market share across mid-market and large enterprise segments.