A Fortune 500 company that is one of the world’s leading manufacturers operating 78 plants in 23 different countries globally needed a complex upgrade to their IT infrastructure. They believe the ability to keep expanding as a company is a key to their success. Maintaining its leadership position requires the mentality of refusing to stand still, react to and embrace the latest industry trends. The capability to find new ways to innovate and create are key. In this new age of digital transformation, it’s vital – which this manufacturer understands well.

In their quest to keep ahead, this manufacturer needed to quickly transform their storage and VMWare environment with minimal downtime and no impact on operations. The project entailed moving 60 TB of data from three separate HPE arrays to one Dell EMC Unity array while upgrading 160 VMs from version 5.1 to version 6.7 directly.

Migrating directly to the newest VMware version and updating the VMware tools, the hardware profile, and updating the VM’s storage to the latest data center versions were vital to perform during this migration. Storage vMotion does not allow for these features. However, Cirrus Data’s DMSv Migration Solution does perform these functions in one easy step.

Cirrus Data’s DMSv migration solution provides the ability to directly migrate from any vCenter to any other vCenter, regardless of version numbers and updates required. The VM hardware profile can update the VMware tools and datastore where the VM resides to the latest level upon cutover of the
VM to the new vCenter and VMware version. These were the key benefits of this solution from Cirrus Data.

Dell EMC recommended the Cirrus solution to the customer and provided all the project management and professional services during the engagement. Cirrus Data engineers were available throughout the migration process as Subject Matter Experts on the end-to-end migration process, from design to implementation, migration, and eventual cutover of each VM.

Minimizing onsite work was crucial due to COVID. As a software-only solution, DMSv enabled all migrations, installations, and cutovers to be completed remotely.

There were some minor performance issues on VMware that the design team addressed by adjusting DMSv settings to maximize the performance of the migration with no impact on the VM’s, applications, and databases that were being migrated.

The entire migration project was completed efficiently, on time, and on budget. Cirrus Data’s DMSv migration solution enables complex migrations with large version changes to complete while upgrading the underlying storage in one easy step. This allowed the customer to achieve their lofty goals and keep in up in a fast-paced global economy.