VeeamUP

Availability for the Modern Data Center: Business & IT Perspectives

Volume
# 02

4 Steps to a Simple,
Secure Migration
A complete best practice guide

Introduction
Make migration
manageable

Page 3

Introduction
Make migration
manageable
Whether youre migrating to consolidate, save costs, improve capacity, deploy new
technology, or simply because support is ending for your current systems, it can be
a challenging process. Its a journey fraught with pitfalls, and without proper care
and consideration it can lead to some serious problems from revenue-sapping
downtime to catastrophic data loss.
Migration represents a significant change across the enterprise. Its impacts will be
far-reaching, and it needs to be treated with the same level of attention and strategic
importance as any other major change project. The key is safety taking the highest
level of care at every stage to ensure that what you have in place is protected, and
that everybody involved has a clear idea of exactly where you want to be and what
the migration needs to achieve.
With support for Windows Server 2003 coming to an end, migration is right at the
top many organizations IT agendas. Its a necessary transition, but not one that
you should rush into. In this guide, weve broken the process down into four steps
to help you understand the challenges at every stage and get a clearer view of the
dangers and opportunities along the way.
Read on to discover the essential best practices for migration success and see how
you can make the entire process simpler and safer.

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step

Understand where
you are and where
you want to be

No matter what your motivation for migration is, the process begins with two big
questions; Where do we go from here? and How do we get there?
The first step in any successful migration is fully understanding, recording, and
backing up your start point. You may think you know your current virtualized
environment, but to reduce risk and aid smooth and seamless migration, you
need to take a really deep look at it to fully understand every connection and codependency that needs to remain in place.
Data loss is a very real threat during migration. If you rush in and the process doesnt
go to plan, you could end up losing huge quantities of business-critical records,
impacting the availability of essential applications, and causing extensive disruption
to operations and untold damage to your business.
By using modern backup and recovery tools, you can capture a perfect image of
your existing environment and use it to quickly and simply restore to that point in
the event of a failed migration. To get the most from this, you need to use these tools
right at the start of your migration project waiting any later invalidates the process
and means you will never be able to completely recapture your as-is state.
Once you have securely backed up your current environment and deeply analyzed
it to understand it in granular detail, you need to start defining the scope of the
migration and identifying what your to-be state looks like. This doesnt just help
you plan the project, it ensures that everybody involved stays on the same page
throughout and doesnt lose sight of the goals youre trying to reach.

Page 5

Step 1:
Understand where you are
and where you want to be
Customer Spotlight:
Tata Global
Beverages Ltd.
Faced with a major
virtualization project, Tata
Global Beverages Ltd chose
Veeam Backup Management
Suite to help reduce risk,
protect data, and streamline
the management of its new
virtualized environment.
With Veeams help, Tata
Global Beverages Ltd
was able to:
Improve the security,
visibility and control
of its VMware
environment
Meet RPOs and RTOs
with frequent backup
and quick recovery
Gain total control of
virtualized and backup
environments

At this point, it is important to ask yourself a few key questions:

What does our new environment need to help us achieve?

Do we have the skills and resources to make this migration
happen the way we want?
What specific capacity/performance/cost benefits
are we looking to gain?
How can the project be executed with the minimum
possible disruption to operations?
Can we execute this plan by ourselves?

Once youve answered these questions, you may find that you need some help in
this process. If you find that you do want to engage a migration partner to help you,
this is the stage to do it. By getting them involved early, they can offer you all the
help youll need, and ensure that your migration goes right first time.
With every factor considered and your scope laid out in front of you, youre ready to
begin the initial stages of testing and configuration.

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step

Testing
and configuring
your new normal

Page 7

Step 2:
Testing and configuring
your new normal
Testing is an essential part of any migration. Going straight from your current
environment to implementing your new one can cause a myriad of issues
across the organization. Any faults or failures that occur will directly impact your
operations and can end up setting you back weeks in your journey to the newly
migrated and fully functioning environment.
When you have your secure restore point in place, you can use it as a sandbox to
test the migration and identify potential issues safely before you go live. It can
function as a virtual duplicate of your current environment, allowing you to test
everything to breaking point.
With the right virtual lab tools, you can perform functional tests for operating
systems, applications, and entirely new environments. That means you can explore
the impact of a deployment or migration in rich detail to help you fine tune your
plan and execute it far more effectively.
Testing like this also enables you to identify your true capacity requirements and
clearly understand the full extent of the resources youll need when you roll out
your migration. Again, this is an ideal opportunity to engage with an organization
that can help guide your migration process. If you need more resources,
skills, and knowledge than you have in house, you can pick up on that before
implementation and get the support you need, when you need it.

Customer Spotlight:
Datacert Inc.
Efficient backup, recovery
and management of its
virtual machines (VMs) are
high priorities for Datacert.
So when it embarked on a
new VM migration project,
it selected Veeam as its
strategic partner.
By engaging with Veeam
early in the migration
process, Datacert was
able to:
Execute a complete
migration in just 45 days
Save $140,000 in colocation rental fees by
migrating faster than
predicted
Keep downtime to an
absolute minimum
throughout the process

User acceptance testing will also allow you to really see what the upcoming
changes will mean for your users. By putting the test scenarios into the hands
of end users you can start to build up a complete picture of the challenges and
requirements youll need to take into account during your implementation.
With comprehensive testing complete, youll be in a good position to make
a well-informed start to your implementation process.

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step

Implementation
and roll out

Even after extended testing using virtual labs, its still vital that you dont rush into
immediately implementing your new migration plan. Implementation should be
a gradual process to ensure the success of your migration project. Your choices
and actions at this critical stage will determine the ongoing success of your newly
migrated environment.
At the start of your iterative implementation process you should take the time to
fully document the new system creating backups and detailed records to help
resolve any potential issues later down the line. By capturing the new system at this
stage, youll always have a completely clean and fully functional restore point to go
back to should you ever need it.
Implementation is also the ideal stage to plan for any future capacity requirements.
Taking the time now to identify and account for additional future capacity will
make things a lot simpler when the time comes to implement and integrate it.
With the right visibility and planning tools, youll also be able to identify immediate
opportunities for capacity optimization boosting the efficiency of the new
environment from day one.
Its essential that you understand how your new migration will affect users across
your enterprise. During implementation, consultative sessions and training should
be conducted to ensure everybody can get to grips with the new environment once
its in place.

Page 9

Step 3:
Implementation
and roll out
Customer Spotlight:
Raad voor de
Kinderbescherming
Faced with the colossal task
of migrating VMs between
two data centers, Raad voor
de Kinderbescherming
enlisted the help of Veeams
migration experts.
With Veeam Backup and
Recovery, Raad voor de
Kinderbescherming
was able to:
Seamlessly migrate
between two different
types of storage
Avoid disruption to
existing processes and
minimize downtime
Gain a comprehensive
view of both new and
old scenarios

As with every stage of the migration plan, youll need to keep track of project
progress to ensure it staying on track, on budget, and on time. A variety of modern
availability tools can help you cut the time spent at this stage and ensure that every
part of your implementation processes is executed as seamlessly as possible.
With a smooth implementation behind you, the final step is running your new
environment.

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step

Running your
newly migrated
environment

Page 11

Step 4:
Running your newly
migrated environment
Congratulations your newly migrated environment is now live!
So whats next?
The steps youve taken to get to this point have ensured that the migration went
seamlessly, users have adopted it quickly, and there was very little disruption
to your existing operations. But now youre faced with a new task ensuring
the continuing availability for your new environment.
To get the most from your newly migrated architecture, you need to have:

The security of advanced system and application data protection

Advanced granular restore capabilities to keep you up and running
if disaster strikes
Up-to-date and relevant information on capacity and resource planning
The ability to safely test and develop new applications and processes as your
needs evolve

Getting all of these key availability enablers in place isnt an easy task. But if you
engaged the right strategic partner at the beginning of your migration process,
they should be able to help you using a comprehensive range of modern tools and
solutions.
As the migration project draws to a close, its a good idea to spend some time
reviewing the process, assessing what went right and wrong, and comparing
your finished migrated environment to the original outline of what you wanted
to achieve.
If things didnt turn out the way you first wanted them to, why was that? If you
encountered significant issues along the way, it may be worth getting in touch with
an organization with deep migration expertise that can help you understand why.
They can then work with you to either attempt the migration again or help ensure
that your next migration plan goes seamlessly from the start.

VeeamUP. Availability for the Modern Data Center: Business & IT Perspectives. Volume 02

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onclusion
Four steps
to migration heaven

Page 13

onclusion
Four steps to migration heaven
Whether youre migrating files, virtual machines, operating systems, or whole data
centers, the challenges and risks are the same. You need to take the highest levels of
care at every stage to protect critical data and applications, not disrupt operations,
and ensure that your end point is exactly what you want it to be.
Follow the four steps, and you can take a lot of the pain out of complex migrations:

Plan: Understand your current state, create complete records and backups of
your existing environment, and clearly define what you want the migration
project to achieve.
Test: Use your complete backup as a virtual sandbox and use virtual lab tools to
test the functionality and compatibility of apps, operating systems, or entirely
new environments.
Implement: Commence the implementation process, taking on board anything
you learned from conducting tests. Implement gradually while considering
future capacity plans, optimizing current capacity, and providing complete
training for users.
Run: Review the process to identify what could have been improved, and
implement new capabilities to help maximize the ongoing efficiency, security,
and availability of the newly migrated environment.

Why Veeam?
Veeam has a complete suite of services and solutions to help you at every stage
of the migration process. By engaging Veeam at the beginning of your migration
project, we can help you make it as simple, safe, and seamless as possible and offer
our expert advice and guidance every step of the way.
Were dedicated to providing complete availability for the modern data center, and
we deliver it with a range of advanced tools:

Veeam Backup and Replication provides a simple way to capture both

your before and after states to simplify testing, mitigate risk, and enable
lightning-fast recoveries
Veeam One increases the visibility of backup and virtual infrastructures and
helps simplify capacity planning
Veeam Management Pack can help you control and manage your VMware
and Hyper-V environments and keep critical applications and services
running as smoothly as possible
Veeam Virtual Labs provide a controlled environment for comprehensive
testing, configuration, and new application development

If youd like to learn more about how Veeam could help you migrate faster, more
efficiently, and more securely, visit us at www.veeam.com or call one of our offices.

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If youd like to learn more visit us at www.veeam.com

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