There comes a time in certain relationships where you have to bring them to an end. It could be they’re a drain on resources, where you have to give more than you get. Or it could be that you don’t feel like you own anything anymore. Yeah, I’m talking about working with Cloud Service Providers (CSPs).
The cost of services can exceed the value they provide for hosting, and the ability to schedule tasks on your timeline can be exorbitant. The data you gather and generate is held hostage for a monthly fee, even if it seems insignificant to start with.
Sometimes it really is necessary to say, “It isn’t me, it’s you.” And say goodbye to cloud providers.
Repatriating, or importing data from a cloud provider to a private data center is never an easy task. Building a data center is daunting – you need to get the space, the power, and the bandwidth yourself to make it work.
A Friend to Help You Move
Just like moving yourself or your family, there are some tasks that can be exciting and fun. Figuring out a data center architecture or the provider agreements can be interesting negotiations, just like choosing a new place and finding furnishings.
And then the time comes to move your “stuff.” The boring and tedious part. You can be someone who is okay with scuffed tables, broken kitchenware, and scrambled belongings. Then again, there’s a time to call in professionals.
Interlock Technology is a team of professionals that can help move your data from service providers to your private cloud. Interlock offers what it calls A3 Migration Solutions to facilitate and ease data migration. I participated in a showcase with Noemi Greyzdorf, VP of Operations, and Massimo Yezzi, CTO.
A3 (say “A cubed”) stands for “Any Data, Any Storage, Anywhere,” which is the basis of their solution. Their migration capabilities allow any object and file data to be migrated in an application-aware way. This means the data maintains consonance (if you have to look it up: in agreement and compatible between actions), compliance, permissions and chain of custody. All of these attributes are preserved end to end.
A perfect use case is repatriating application data from a public service provider to your private cloud. The application performance from the customer’s perspective is seamless and transparent.
Interlock’s A3 solutions are offered in two different ways. A3 DF Classic is a managed, professional services engagement with personnel from Interlock ensuring complete and successful data migration. Alternatively, there’s A3 DATAFORGE, a licensed software solution used by a certified migration engineer.
Consulting is available from the Interlock team, but the engagement isn’t a full professional services endeavor.
Fast, Easy Deployment
Under the hood, the A3 solutions have a couple different components: the Data Application Manager and Data Movers. The Data Application Manager (ForgeManager) is a single instance that oversees the migration and provides the migration engineer a dashboard of progress and status. Multiple Data Movers facilitate the migration, each capable of supplying up to 128 threads of migration. Data Movers are deployed as needed to accomplish the migration at the speed the customer is looking for.
The ForgeManager and the Data Movers are simply VMs that can be deployed into a customer’s existing VMware virtual infrastructure. Interlock supplies them as OVFs that are quickly and easily installed onto existing ESXi instances.
To pull application data from a source like AWS S3 storage to a target like a local NFS filer, just point the A3 solution at the source and target, connect the correct application-aware modules, and it’s good to go.
Repatriation of cloud data isn’t its only trick. Interlock is just as capable of migrating between disparate storage systems within a single data center or across long distances.
Consistent, Certifiable Results
Interlock takes pains to ensure that migrated data is exactly the way an application needs it. Metadata, permissions, audit trails and logs are all retained. This is accomplished by using individual, application-aware modules. These can be off-the-shelf applications, or new modules can be developed for custom applications. The available library includes more than 20 commonly-used commercial applications, like NICE, Documentum and SourceOne.
Regulatory compliance is maintained, adhering to stringent requirements concerning data integrity, immutability, chain of custody, authentication and permissions. All ownership and retention information associated with the data is migrated along with the data. Encrypted data isn’t decrypted, and multiple checksums, like MD5 and SHA256, ensure the integrity of the migration.
Finally, audit reports detail each action performed during the migration, guaranteeing that the full data lifecycle is documented.
DATAFORGE migrates data at the storage layer rather than the application layer to speed up the process. This enables large-scale datasets to be migrated in a fraction of the time they would otherwise take. This is useful when data is trapped because an application can no longer access the data where it resides. This could be the case if the license on a particular version of an application expires, or an outdated storage system starts to fail and can’t handle an application workload.
Scalability and Observability
Interlock’s A3 solutions provide a framework to easily scale out to numerous migration tasks associated with various applications. It can also scale up to accommodate large-scale applications involving billions of objects and many terabytes of data.
This can all be observed through their ForgeManager as individual tasks with various different states and progress.
Each task can be expanded to view individual status. Errors can be checked and remediated. Simplicity is one of the goals of the A3 Solution.
Conclusion
In the case of repatriation, the data where it resides is simply costing money, which could be saved in an on-premises data center. Repatriation can also be needed when an application can no longer run on a cloud service provider, either due to enterprise guidelines or regulatory reasons.
Private cloud is the way forward for many organizations. But like it or not, data migration is part of that. The A3 DATAFORGE solution by Interlock Technology provides a consistent, compliant and fast way of leaving public cloud, and move applications and data to the safety of an on-premises data center where you control them.
I’ve written and talked extensively about building private cloud infrastructure in a variety of places where you can learn how to settle into your own data center easier and faster. Talk to Interlock Technology about their case studies to get more info. And make sure to check out more coverage from my fellow panelists on the Tech Field Day Showcase with Interlock.
