There are appliances out there that can plug into a SAN (I forget the name of the NetApp offering) and move LUNs, but do you really want to migrate everything exactly as it is? For example, if you had Oracle, you might want to reorganize the underlying LUN layout of the filesystems in order to use snapshots for backups or move different parts of the workload. You might need to change the LUN alignment, and while ReplicatorX could do this, most of the SAN-based appliances cannot.

For AIX, you shouldn't need anything at all. The host itself can nondisruptively migrate its own LUNs within the LVM, plus you're not tied to the same LUN layout. For example, if the sysadmin didn't want to have 100 x 72GB LUNs they could use the LVM and move that into 8 x 1TB LUNs instead for easier management and quicker reboots (fewer devices to discover).

From: Milazzo Giacomo [mailto:G.Milazzo@sinergy.it]
Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2011 6:03 PM
To: toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: SAN data migration

Hi all,

once upon a time there was “ReplicatorX”…and now? J Anyway I’ve never used it and I don’t know about its pros and cons.

I should plan a SAN data migration from dozens of servers and hundreds of LUNs on HP EVA 5000, IBM DS 4800, EMX CX700 and 300 and so on…

…and all of this has to be performed online, with no disruption, better if agentless (os are Windows, Linux, AIX and more, cluster based on Windows, RHEL, Suse, Oracle…)

Just one restart could be admitted for each systems…

Any suggestion, tools …

Thanks in advance,