Features - Storage Innovations:

IMATION SPS EXPANDS INTO DATA MIGRATION/CONSOLIDATION

Imation Corp, a worldwide leader in data storage and information management, announced at SAN East that, due to customer demand, its Storage Professional Services (SPS) group has introduced a new, targeted data migration/consolidation service. This new service addresses many of the hidden challenges customers face when embarking on server/storage consolidation projects. Storage consolidation is one of the many issues Imation SPS focuses on with clients to help them solve their biggest storage challenges.

"There seems to be a market perception that server and storage consolidation is the 'cure all' for many of the pains of managing a company's distributed data," said Bill Peldzus, storage consulting marketing manager, Imation Storage Professional Services. "Based upon our work with enterprise customers and government agencies, we have identified some of the more prevalent, chronic issues in our customers' consolidation efforts. These issues are surfacing across all industries, from the government sector, to retail, to the financial industry."

Planning and validation

Many customers underestimate the planning time it takes to migrate their data from one storage platform to another. "Moving multiple terabytes that may be stored in databases or other applications is a monumental task that often takes much longer than originally estimated," said Peldzus. "The planning process is critical to the success of this data migration -- it can make or break the project. Testing is also a necessary step. It is important to take the calculations that worked on paper and confirm that they work in reality. This 'dry run' significantly mitigates the risk, making for a smoother migration. Imation's Storage Networking Lab is the ideal setting for this validation."

Neglecting recurring storage management issues

Customers often overlook recurring storage management challenges regardless of the architecture. "Just because you physically centralize servers and storage doesn't mean your issues with storage management magically go away," said Peldzus. "Consolidation offers an excellent opportunity to hone or implement new storage management strategies, but it doesn't just happen by itself -- it needs to be well planned and well tested to ensure the benefits are clearly realized. Imation's new service offering specifically addresses those challenges."

Dealing with complex performance monitoring and resource management issues

Another matter to consider is the increased complexity of performance monitoring and resource management -- especially on larger servers that house multiple applications. In a distributed environment, the paradigm was primarily a 'one server/one application' architecture. Larger consolidated servers, especially in the UNIX space, must be more proactively managed to ensure one application is not stealing resources from another -- a situation that may not have existed in a distributed environment.

Addressing new storage challenges

Finally, even successful server consolidation projects can introduce new issues. "Seven separate data centers may not have had any problems making their individual backup windows," said Peldzus. "However, scheduling and backing up a much larger, single consolidated pool of storage requires a concerted effort in planning, monitoring and executing the data backups and -- more importantly -- the data restores. Additionally, with 'more eggs in one basket,' high-availability architecture and clustering software may be required. For example, if three sites are now on a single application server, a server outage suddenly has a much larger, dramatic impact. Further steps may be needed to better protect the data and minimize outage vulnerability."

Return on investment

There can be a tremendous return on investment when centralizing a company's server/storage architecture and environment, but careful planning and design work must take place to maximize investment and minimize risk.

"Looking ahead, for many organizations, consolidation may become necessary rather than optional, as demonstrated with the new Department of Homeland Security Act where several disparate operations will be merged into a consolidated infrastructure," Peldzus said. "Not all applications lend themselves to consolidated architectures, but for the customers we've worked with where it does make sense, a clearly defined and well-executed plan yielded numerous benefits and positioned them for future growth."

Imation Storage Professional Services will now offer data migration/consolidation services in addition to its current assessment, design, proof-of-concept, implementation and managed storage service offerings. Imation's portfolio of services currently focuses on:

• Backup and Restore
• Disaster Recovery
• High Availability
• Storage Management
• SAN Fabric Design
• Storage Virtualization
• IP, SAN and NAS Storage Assessment

About Imation Storage Professional Services and Storage Networking Lab

Imation SPS is the only consulting business in the industry to offer customers a full lifecycle of independent storage consulting services, including assessment, design, proof-of-concept testing, implementation and managed storage services. Imation's experienced storage architects and storage engineers, highly skilled in the full array of storage networking technologies and concepts, coupled with its Storage Networking Lab capabilities, offer customers end-to-end services for storage infrastructure solutions.

The Imation Storage Networking Lab, located at Imation headquarters in Oakdale, Minnesota, is a world-class facility that offers vendor-independent testing and services to help companies and equipment manufacturers develop and evaluate data-storage solutions in an objective environment. Imation's Storage Networking Lab provides a hands-on testing environment that makes integrating storage networking solutions into business environments as risk-free and cost-effective as possible.

For more information on Imation Storage Professional Services, please visit www.imation.com/storage consulting, or send an e-mail to storageinfo@imation.com.

About Imation Corp

Imation Corp is a global company widely recognized as a leader in removable data storage. Imation removable data storage offerings are a key ingredient in much of the world's technology infrastructure -- from corporate data centers, to networks, to small businesses and home users. The product line is one of the broadest in the industry, with magnetic and optical products for the enterprise data center, the network environment, and the consumer. On its own and through industry alliances, Imation continues to pioneer today's proven tape, optical and diskette technologies.

As of June 2002, Imation employed approximately 3,200 people worldwide. The company has sales in over 60 countries with international revenues contributing approximately 47% of total sales. Additional information about Imation is available on the company's Website at www.imation.com, or by calling Imation at 888-466-3456.