A fantastic opportunity
But a data migration activity can also be a fantastic opportunity (as well as a necessity) to potentially leave “the crap behind”. To clean out some old, useless, no longer relevant data that was just hogging valuable disk space. Before you go ahead and move the same old data from old box A to the new shiny box B, take a moment to analyze and run through a couple of points:
• Should we decommission the old system and move the old data to the new system at all? Or should we keep the old system with the old data, and reserve the new system for new data?
• Should we move all data, or just portions of the data? If just portions of the data, what portions of data?
• Should you filter on creation date, or perhaps a more relevant last-access date? Identify, if possible, what data is “hotter” than others. Based on last-access dates and modification dates for example.
• Should you filter on data type/application type? Leaving music files, move files, etc behind but definitely moving office documents for example?
• Should you filter out old project areas?
Deciding on a migration strategy
Before deciding on a data migration strategy, be sure to include and weigh the two variables of data volume and data value against each other. Collect and report on the data you have, assign the right parameters to the data migration variables, and tweek the analysis to calculate the best ROI on the data being moved or left behind.
WhatData can help you migrate
WhatData’s online storage reporting solution ( http://www.WhatData.com ) takes the pain out of storage analysis using a web-based application without the need for any software installation. It lets you report on how your file servers, NAS and SAN's are being utilized and it displays and groups the data per user, per folder, according to age, access date, and more. It is unique in that not only lets you report on users, files and file types, but also gives you immediate insights into where the actual problem areas lie. By applying Analytics to the report data, bottle necks are highlighted for you to concentrate your management efforts where they pay off the most.
