News Briefs - Software:

OuterBay Enables Linux Migration Strategy For Databases

OuterBay announced that its Application Data Management (ADM) Suite enables a field-proven, three-step Linux migration strategy. This approach makes it possible to achieve stability, lower total cost of ownership and top application performance with a simple methodology and minimum downtime involved with migrating applications and databases.

"World-class products such as Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), and world-class support for Linux from Oracle, have made Linux-based systems highly scalable and fault tolerant. This has enabled many enterprises to take advantage of Linux's lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and architectural flexibility," said Jamshed Patel, Senior Director of Linux Services Engineering at Oracle. "OuterBay's ADM tool effectively enables our customers to migrate to Linux and take advantage of Unbreakable Linux."

"Together with Oracle, OuterBay has developed a three-step process that provides a clear roadmap to help the enterprise take full advantage of a high- performance, low-cost Linux platform," said Michael Howard, Chairman and CEO of OuterBay. "OuterBay will play a pivotal role in the effective migration of enterprise production and archive databases to Linux."

OuterBay's Three-Step Linux Migration Strategy

OuterBay Application Data Management (ADM) provides a simple, field-proven, three-step migration strategy:

Step 1:

Archive inactive application data out of the production database to Linux: OuterBay ADM relocates inactive application data from the production database to an online archive on Linux. This introduces Linux into the data center without disrupting the production environment.

Key benefits include:

• Immediately improve application performance for the current production environment;
• Increase stability and availability of the production environment;
• Build operational experience supporting the Linux/Intel environment.

Step 2:

Test migration to Linux with subsets of the production database: This step utilizes OuterBay ADM to create relationally-intact subsets of the production database, accelerating migration testing.

Key benefits include:

• Accelerate the testing process with less hardware resources;
• Perform trial migrations;
• Migrate and enhance backup and recovery procedures;
• Test and implement the latest Oracle functionality.

Step 3:

Migrate the production database to Linux: Reducing the size of the production database through Step 1 provides a tremendous benefit to the migration process by reducing the overall downtime required. It also reduces database management complexity and optimizes application performance.

Key benefits include:

• Reduce downtime during migration;
• Optimize post-migration performance.

"Unmanaged data growth degrades application performance, reduces availability, and escalates IT infrastructure costs," said Charlie Gerry, analyst and Senior Program Director at META Group. "Larger application databases take longer and are more complex to migrate from one platform to another, or from one version of the application to the next. Having an effective Linux migration strategy is critical in the effective management of this data and can help avoid repeated and costly upgrades to bigger SMP servers."

After the migration is completed, OuterBay ADM's archiving and subsetting capabilities continue to maintain application performance and reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for the application environment.