In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations are constantly challenged to drive innovation, delight customers, and uphold their commitment to sustainability. However, these aspirations often hit a roadblock when outdated storage solutions hinder progress. This was a conundrum faced by one of the largest electric motor manufacturers, pushing them to embark on an ambitious storage modernization journey. By transitioning from aging Dell XtremeIO and Unity storage arrays to modern Dell PowerMax NVMe All-Flash arrays within a new data center, this manufacturer aimed to not only enhance performance and efficiency but also improve customer service.
The project was not without its complexities. The manufacturer had just nine months to migrate a diverse range of hosts, applications, and VMs across multiple vendors from legacy data centers to a new facility across the state. This task was further complicated by the organization’s global customer base, which meant minimal downtime during the migration process. Given the intricate nature of the storage environment, a remote migration was the only viable option. However, orchestrating this endeavor while managing other strategic projects presented a significant challenge for the IT team.
The solution would require a data mobility partner equipped with the necessary solution and professional services expertise to navigate the multifaceted migration landscape. Recommended by a trusted reseller, Cirrus Data emerged as the perfect fit for the job. With its Cirrus Migrate On-Premises (CMO) and Cirrus Migrate Cloud (CMC) data mobility solutions, combined with an experienced Professional Services team, Cirrus Data was ready to tackle the migration head-on. More importantly, its solutions offered any-to-any connectivity, making it possible to migrate a wide range of systems, including AIX, Linux, Oracle, Windows, Oracle Virtual Box, and Oracle Enterprise Linux, without disrupting critical services.
Cirrus Data’s professional services team stepped up to the plate, leveraging their wealth of experience to oversee the entire data center migration. Employing CMO and CMC, the team orchestrated a seamless migration of hosts and applications to the new Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe storage, all without causing any impact to the live systems that the manufacturer’s customers relied upon.
The complexity of the manufacturer’s Oracle databases presented an additional challenge, since they were operating on a mix of SAN storage, Virtual Box, and Oracle Enterprise Linux, making traditional migrations unfeasible without substantial downtime. To circumvent this, the Cirrus Data team devised a VM-Compute-level migration strategy for the Oracle Virtual Box environment. This innovative approach involved moving the environment to a more supportable hyper-converged setup on VMWare, while ensuring the consistency of the Oracle databases.
By working closely with the manufacturer’s team, the Cirrus Data experts successfully completed this complex storage refresh and data center migration within the stipulated nine-month timeframe, proving that with the right technology and expertise, almost any data mobility or storage modernization obstacle can be overcome. Check out the full story on this case study.
