SAN Booting System Migration Utility by InQuinox

InQuinox announced the release of the industry’s first Storage Area Network (SAN) booting system migration utility.

SanXfer software migrates Windows-based SAN booting systems to new hardware automatically, regardless of vendor, model or attached devices. It expands server hardware options, simplifies administration and Disaster Recovery (DR), and increases IT environment reliability. Unlike manual SAN booting system migration methods, which are error-prone and can take days to complete, SanXfer accurately replaces, upgrades, clones and provisions servers within minutes. In addition, for organizations that are not yet booting from a SAN, SanXfer makes it easy to convert a local booting system to a SAN booting system.

SanXfer solves a major obstacle that prevents IT organizations from booting from SANs today: the problem of replacing servers that need to be replaced with faster, better hardware or have died. Under current technical constraints, if a SAN booting server is replaced with new hardware it simply won’t boot. This is caused by the differences in chipsets, CPUs and mass storage controllers between servers. The problem is exasperated by the fact that even identical server models often have different chipsets.

“IT departments are constrained by the difficulty in replacing servers supporting SAN booting systems,” said Brad Hargett, InQuinox’s CEO. “SanXfer is another example, following our announcement last month of the SD3 deduplication appliance, of our mission to solve seemingly intractable IT problems caused by data proliferation. SanXfer solves a commonplace datacenter problem. It gives IT the freedom to replace a SAN booting server with hardware from any vendor in minutes and lowers IT operational expenses by improving the use of existing servers while reducing deployment, administration, backup and disaster recovery costs.”

SAN Boot Disk Migration and Disaster Recovery
SanXfer also helps IT organizations that are not yet booting from a SAN. SanXfer migrates existing server boot disks into the SAN without a reinstall, or waiting for future budget cycles or the next round of server upgrades. It also aids in disaster recovery (DR) by making failover to a stand-by datacenter straightforward and reliable, an effort that many companies find highly desirable but is cost-prohibitive to all but the largest enterprises. Reinstalling servers from scratch, restoring servers from backup or re-provisioning  servers on the fly are some of the most time-consuming and error-prone approaches used by IT organizations today..
 
“Using SanXfer and existing SAN replication technologies, site-wide disaster recovery is easy,” said Mitchell Mikula, InQuinox’s vice president of Software Development. “You simply replicate the boot disk to your DR site and point your DR-site server to the boot LUN in the replicated SAN. SanXfer takes over, reconfiguring it to boot correctly within minutes instead of hours or even days.”

Rapid Server Provisioning and Cloning
SanXfer is also effective in shortcutting server provisioning and cloning. When used in conjunction with SAN replication technologies, it will copy a standard build or existing server automatically to perform the changes required to boot the new copy from the new hardware. The SanXfer reconfiguration process takes care of changing the identity of the new system, including assigning new IP addresses, a new hostname and a new Security Identifier (SID). When used with thin-provisioning and copy-on-write technology, SanXfer can deploy hundreds of new servers in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost and using a fraction of the SAN space required by manual provisioning and cloning methods.

“Whether working in the storage realm, or on the business operations side of an enterprise, any IT professional who has replaced or deployed new hardware understands the difficulty with driver compatibility," said Joseph Martins, Managing Director and Analyst, Data Mobility Group. "I’d encourage businesses to see the immediate pain points SanXfer will solve, when managing the movement of information from one machine to another or even into a virtual environment. SanXfer provides a much-needed solution that has broad applicability beyond storage.”

SanXfer supports Windows 2008, Windows 2003 and Windows XP. It also integrates with VMware. This allows a physical server to be moved into a virtual environment in a fraction of the time required by traditional VMware migration methods. The system can then be easily moved back to physical hardware if required.
 

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