Today, we are going to talk about data migration. Before you can actually start using the cloud, you’ll have to first figure out how you’re actually going to get your data to the cloud. In my experience, there are three primary factors that you should be.
Considering when you’re looking at data transfer methods, the first being the type of workload that you’re moving. And the second is, how much data are you moving? Certainly, how quickly do you need the transfer to occur? So for large-scale data migrations and by large, I mean terabytes to petabytes worth of data.
Cloud providers will typically provide you with a portfolio of options, you know, products services that enable you to move your data from point. A to point B, and most of these portfolios span two primary categories offline transfer and online transfer. For offline transfer, which is great if you’re in a remote location or if you’re in a place where high-speed connections just are unavailable and just cost prohibitive to you offline.
Transfer options are great because they leverage portable storage devices to move your data from point. A to point B, the first meeting a customer own device. And what that looks like is you sending in your own piece of Hardware, whether it’s a USB stick, external hard drive CD DVD, something like that to a cloud providers data center for connection.
Once that device is mounted, depending on the cloud provider either, you will We control that data transfer or they will initiate the transfer on your behalf and once the transfer is complete, they’ll ship the device, back to you or some providers actually offer to destroy the device on your behalf, if that’s something that you’re interested in.
Not a hard and fast rule, but we often recommend a customer own device transfer method for workloads that are 10 terabytes, or less in size, again, not as strict rule, But A good rule of thumb to go by. And for workloads that exceed, that 10 terabyte capacity, will often Point people towards provider one device offline transfer options. And what that really looks like is your cloud provider shipping. You a large capacity portable storage device to your location.
For you to put your data onto it and then immediately, send back to the cloud providers data center. Once it gets back to that cloud provider, they’re going to immediately offload your data from that device, and into your target Cloud environment.
Once the transfer is complete, absolutely go free and access your data. While the cloud provider, will securely wipe that device of your data and immediately return. The device to inventory for reuse for the next customer. So, similar to the customer on device, we use this as the standard Benchmark for capacities when using a provider own device. And that’s really tens of terabytes to hundreds.
Depends on the cloud provider that you’re working with some of the devices actually span from single terabytes and capacity all the way up to a petabyte scale. Just depends on who you’re working with and what you’re trying to do. And finally, if you’re really not looking for an offline transfer, you want to transfer data over the network or you’re really looking for that high speed technology.
That’s when you want to consider an online transfer option, you can write custom applications using high-speed transfer libraries or spit up a high speeds transfer client at your location and connect it to the cloud providers high-speed server, cluster.
Something to consider with online transfer as well as offline. I’m as I’m sure you can tell your network connections in speed. Significantly impact all of these options, but especially the online transfer. If you’re thinking that your transfer time is really going to creep up into that, you know, week long, or plus duration, for a migration, you might want to consider a combination of any of these offerings or really an offline transfer, the longer that you spend migrating using over the network options, the longer that It’ll take and the longer, or I’m sorry, the higher the cost typically.
If you’re looking to drive down costs, you definitely want to keep that in mind. And then finally, just a couple things that you should probably consider with some of these offerings with a customer own device, definitely. Look at your Cloud providers. Web page. They’ll do a good job of outlining any hardware specifications or requirements.
So that you are, you know, able to send a device that’s actually compatible with what they’re looking for the provider own device area. Definitely want to look at their web pages and see any features and benefits of the varying devices. And capacities will offer the size of your workload will really depend on, or I’m sorry will really determine what capacity you’re looking for in terms of device and then extra bells, and whistles like GPS, tracking or Edge Computing. Definitely look and see if any of those pink interests and see if the device models match.