Unlike traditional data migration solutions, which may keep customers locked in to specific vendor platforms, the SGI 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.

Those advantages proved compelling for Iridium, 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 is using the new solution to migrate mission-critical data from an EMC CX 500 array to a new SGI InfiniteStorage 4500 solution.

"For us, the ability to migrate to any device and any storage platform is significant", stated Tad Martin, UNIX systems administrator at Iridium, whose Oracle data warehouse is constantly updated with detail records on mobile user activity and service use. "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. 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."

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 organisation'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.

"By far, the SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution offered a superior storage virtualization component", stated Tad Martin. "In the course of our evaluation, no other vendor presented virtualization we considered workable - and certainly nothing this good."

For a company like Iridium, whose satellite network services run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, non-disruptive data migration is essential. The SGI solution enables Iridium to avoid the cost and disruptions of lost access to enterprise applications and data by migrating volumes while production applications remain on-line and operational.

"As we compared solutions, we were looking at a downtime of perhaps one minute with SGI versus three hours or more with a competing solution", added Tad Martin. "Had we not gone with SGI, 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."

Iridium's IT staff also liked how SGI gives enterprises access to more advanced data services that typically are available only through costly Tier 1 storage platforms. Services such as replication, mirroring, disaster recovery, and rapid application recovery are all accessible with the SGI solution, and can be centrally managed via the SAN-based LSI StoreAge software.

"At first, our main focus was migrating our data to the new SGI InfiniteStorage 4500 array", stated Tad Martin. "But it wasn't long before it was clear that these data services presented additional advantages. The ability to take virtually instantaneous back-ups of your core systems - with basically no impact on those systems - is especially impressive."

"We still plan to leverage virtualization", added Tad Martin. "I expect to use the SGI Virtualized Storage Migration Solution to move data back and forth between the SGI and EMC platforms as necessary. And with the SGI solution, I can expand the InfiniteStorage 4500 array to its capacity, and even install another device alongside my Tier 1 storage, and it will work just as well and as seamlessly as if it was a proprietary system."