New SAN-Based SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution

SGI unveiled the Virtualized Storage Migration Solution,
which gives enterprises the freedom to migrate their data to any
standards-based storage environment.

Unlike traditional data migration solutions, which may keep
customers locked in to specific vendor platforms, the Virtualized
Storage Migration Solution allows enterprises to choose the storage
device that best suits their needs — an advantage that can lead to
better data utilization and significantly lower ownership costs. The
new SGI solution also allows enterprises to migrate data without
disrupting enterprise applications or operations.

"Although market forces have put an end to the era of proprietary
computing platforms, many storage vendors attempt to lock their
customers into a single storage platform, drastically limiting choice
and inevitably increasing cost of ownership," said Ravi Pendekanti,
senior director, worldwide solutions marketing, SGI. "With the SGI
Virtualized Storage Migration Solution, we’re bringing the flexibility
and cost advantages of open standards-based computing to the storage
space. Now organizations can move their data to any new storage device
without impacting operations, and without risking the integrity of
their enterprise data."

The new SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution improves the way
storage virtualization is done by moving volume migration, advanced
data services and storage management onto storage area networks (SANs).
The SGI solution leverages LSI StoreAge virtualization technology.
The StoreAge management software centralizes management of the
organization’s SANs,
and the solution allows users to migrate data simply by indicating a
source volume and a destination storage pool. Rollback capabilities
allow IT administrators to recover from any migration until they are fully satisfied that data has transferred successfully.

"This SAN-based
solution from SGI should help enterprises that are looking to respond
more rapidly to changing business and operational conditions by making
their existing storage infrastructure significantly more flexible,"
said Mark Peters, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "When you
add ‘heterogeneous’ to ‘migration’ and ‘tiering,’ you have a compelling
proposition that permits data movement between platforms and to any
available storage device that is optimum for your business needs;
adding ease of use through a simplified methodology opens the door
wider to improved agility and lower costs."

The SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution has another advantage:
Because it provides a single common toolset across multiple SANs
and other storage platforms, the solution allows organizations to
migrate data from any storage device to any other. At the same time, IT
administrators can choose how much of their current environment they
wish to migrate, deploying as much or as little new storage as
necessary. This can save enterprises significant up-front costs by not
having to invest in large-scale, Tier 1 storage platforms. They also
avoid having to integrate all devices at once to the Virtualized
Storage Migration environment.

Organizations also avoid the cost and disruptions of lost access to
enterprise applications and data because they can migrate data to any
device at any location — all while production applications remain
online and operational.

These advantages proved compelling for Iridium Satellite LLC, the
only mobile satellite service offering gap-free, pole-to-pole coverage
over the entire globe. To meet its rapidly growing data warehousing
demands, Iridium recently deployed the SGI Virtualized Storage
Migration Solution to migrate its mission-critical enterprise data from
an EMC CX 500 array to a new SGI® InfiniteStorage 4500 solution.

"The ability to migrate to any device and any storage platform is
significant," said Tad Martin, UNIX systems administrator at Iridium.
"In evaluating our options, we looked at an upgrade and migration path
with EMC, but staying with them would have meant a sizable cost
increase. On top of that, it was clear we were going to have downtime
for a significant number of servers in our environment, and I didn’t
want to expose our business to those risks. We selected the SGI
Virtualized Storage Migration Solution because SGI offered clearly
superior price/performance with the InfiniteStorage 4500 and a
virtualization component that was literally unbeatable. No other vendor
presented virtualization we considered workable — and certainly nothing
this good."

SGI

Iridium Satellite LLC