TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER
TAbLE of CoNTENTs
Who Should Read ThiS PaPeR? 1
CuRRenT eConomiC ClimaTe iS dRiving uniX-To-linuX migRaTion PRogRamS 1
The CRiTiCal SuCCeSS FaCToRS Common To all uniX To linuX migRaTion PRogRamS 1
ConSequenCeS oF PooR daTa CaPTuRe in duRing The invenToRy BaSeline STage 3
daTa needed FoR PRojeCT SuCCeSS 4
ChallengeS oF aChieving an aCCuRaTe invenToRy BaSeline WiThin Challenging PRojeCT TimeSCale ConSTRainTS 5
ConCluSionS and ReCommendaTionS 6
aPPendiX: STage 1 - BaSeline TollgaTe CheCkliST 7
WHo sHouLd REAd THIs PAPER?
This document is intended for IT professionals responsible for the planning and delivery of UNIX-to-Linux migration projects. This paper will help you set up your project for success, regardless of whether you are:
A program manager responsible for success of migration as a whole
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A technologist responsible for the technical aspects of the migration
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A sponsor accountable for migration from a business perspective
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A stakeholder impacted by outcome of project
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BMC has played a key role in successful UNIX-to-Linux migrations. We will share insights that BMC has gained by helping numerous customers, as well as insights from some of those customers. This document will highlight key success factors and steps that will move your migration project forward expeditiously and cost effectively. The focus of this document is to provide a common approach and methodology to all successful UNIX-to-Linux migration projects.
CuRRENT ECoNomIC CLImATE Is dRIvINg uNIX-To-LINuX
mIgRATIoN PRogRAms
Corporations are facing many challenges as a result of today’s economy. Decreased revenues and intense competition are driving the need to reduce cost, adapt quickly to business needs, and rapidly mitigate risk. Along with the pressure to provide reliable IT services to the business and the customer, there are significant performance and economic drivers – including space utilization, efficiency, technology lifecycle, virtualization, cloud solutions, and standardization – motivating corporations to develop a migration strategy to reduce complexity, drive cost savings, and return measurable business value to the customer.
One example of the this economic drive for efficiency is the OS/platform consolidation and simplification, with anticipated cost savings from the shift away from RISC-based UNIX systems to x86 server architectures, migrating off costly UNIX and mainframes onto Linux environments. When you add to these OS/platform migrations the ongoing need for hardware refresh and the programmatic need to assess and implement virtualization, it’s clear to see that successful migration projects are increasingly critical to the vitality of the data center.
THE CRITICAL suCCEss fACToRs CommoN To ALL uNIX-To-LINuX
mIgRATIoN PRogRAms
A review of vendor best-practice UNIX-to-Linux migration methodologies reveals that projects tend to follow a standard order of steps, with the only differences being in scope and scale:
stage 1: Inventory baseline – Identify and capture a thorough inventory of the current state of servers and software in the target environment along with their interdependencies
stage 2: Evaluate – Identify optimization opportunities and architect future state environment
These projects begin with the inventory baseline step stage to develop the foundation of information needed upon which to base critical decisions in subsequent project stages, which will lead to optimal project outcomes in a timely and cost-effective manner.
This is true whether migrating to a new server platform, within a data center, or across multiple data centers. The results of the baseline stage document an inventory of what is already in the datacenter at a level of detail that allows informed decision to be made about what needs to be changed and the impact it will have on other data center resources. For example:
Identify in scope UNIX server candidates for the migration and provide an accurate inventory that includes
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configuration attributes
Determine suitability/compatibility of existing hardware to support future state platforms and proactively plan
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for performance changes and develop models to adjust to meet business expectations
Determine which software is nearing end of life, as these are good candidates for migration that can be
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incorporated into plans to reduce down time and increase effectiveness
Determine versions of software to enable investigation of current support level on chosen Linux platform and
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coordinate migration activities and timeline accordingly
Determine cohesive server groups based on applications, services, and workloads as it is typically not
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practical or sensible to migrate all servers at once. Hence a need to identify groups of related servers to move together.
Prioritize migration workstreams based on risk, complexity, and the opportunity to obtain the greatest benefits
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in the shortest time. For example, backup services are low risk while custom applications are high risk. Plan migration with insight of server dependencies to proactively mitigate risk of downstream impact on
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business with minimal service interruption
The inventory phase provides a starting point for a new deployment. A
“
ough inventory is critical to the success of the later steps. The inventory stage
can be broken into five steps: hardware, OS, storage, stack, and function.
Large data centers often do not have a reliable inventory of hardware and
software in production. That is, they cannot easily answer the question: Exactly
what needs to be migrated, and on what machines? This risk can be mitigated
by spending ample time in the inventory phase. It is not enough to simply write
down a list of all the servers; information must be collected about the
applica-tions that are running and all their dependencies. Before leaving the inventory
phase, an organization should not only know what is running in their data
center, but also how everything interacts.”
CoNsEquENCEs of PooR dATA CAPTuRE duRINg THE INvENToRy
bAsELINE sTAgE
Many organizations have IT departments that have followed a path of irregular, organic growth resulting in a mixture of systems, platforms and applications that vary in complexity. By starting with a comprehensive inventory and audit of all hardware, software, applications, and licenses, and by leveraging an automated tool to reduce load on already stretched operation skills and resources, the migration process will enable critical-path decisions to be made with confidence. Manual configuration checks can take upwards of two hours per server and days to work out business application dependencies. This effort can place a significant load on already stretched operation skills and resources, and – at best – they are only 75 percent accurate and instantly out of date. This has the potential to negatively impact:
Business reputation through unexpected or prolonged outages
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Project timescales due to resolving and adjusting for unexpected issues
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Project costs by additional resource requirements.
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dATA NEEdEd foR PRojECT suCCEss
The inventory baseline phase provides a starting point for a new deployment, and a thorough inventory is critical to the success of all steps to follow. The inventory baseline phase can be broken into five steps: hardware, OS, storage, stack software, and function. For each step, the following details must be collected:
HARdWARE sTEP Manufacturer
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Model»
Architecture (32/64 bit)»
CPU type (e.g., x86, AMD64, EM64T, IA64, PPC, PA-RISC)
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Number of CPUs»
Number of cores»
RAM»
Rack Size (RU)
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Power capacity / Heat output – proxies for age / efficiency
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oPERATINg sysTEm TyPE ANd vERsIoN sTEP
Type (Solaris*, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, AIX*, NT, Red Hat Enterprise Linux etc.
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Version
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Release level (build, kernel, service pack)
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Architecture (32/64 bit)
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sToRAgE REquIREmENTs sTEP
Local/NAS/SAN
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HBA interfaces»
Firmware»
sTACk sofTWARE sTEP
The stack includes all infrastructure and application deployment software in a standard build, with the exception of the line-of-business applications that the server hosts. That in-cludes, but is not limited to, security, backup, and management and monitoring software. You must take care to ensure that the information captured will allow you to rebuild a similar stack. The information gathered here will serve as a baseline for delivering the application on a test platform. Important information includes, but is not limited to:
Running software products/processes
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Versions
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Applications
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Package dependencies (e.g., other applications, processes, systems, userids, etc.)
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Software vendor
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Version
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APPLICATIoNs ANd sERvICEs fuNCTIoN sTEP
CHALLENgEs of ACHIEvINg AN ACCuRATE INvENToRy bAsELINE WITHIN
CHALLENgINg PRojECT TImEsCALE CoNsTRAINTs
Key to all a successful migration projects is that you begin with an accurate and detailed data center inventory of servers, soft-ware, and applications, including identifying inter-system and application dependencies. What are the challenges and barriers to creating the inventory and what are the opportunities to address them? How can you meet and maintain the quality of the data while meeting restricted timeframes?
To achieve this, organizations need to consider several aspects of data quality. Coverage – Ensure all the in scope servers have been discovered
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Completeness – Ensure all the required attributes are captured
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Accuracy – Ensure the data is correct and reliable
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Currency – Ensure the data is up to date, considering the number of changes that take place in DC while
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meeting restricted time frames. Automation can resolve many of the data quality and timeline concerns, however there are other considerations of procurement process, integration process, and costs of licensing. A complete IT inventory of servers, soft-ware, and applications, including identifying inter-system and
application dependencies – is central to any decision-making process and is instrumental to ongoing operations as changes continue to occur in the data center. When performed manually, this inventory can take staff-months to complete, and based on empirical evidence, it is unlikely to provide the required granularity and data quality for effective decision support. Data gathered is employed in subsequent plan-ning, cost, and risk-mitigation activities, and also serves as the basis of a system of record that will guide change dur-ing the migration itself. If the data is not accurate, it could have costly, long-term effects on the operations.
By using BMC Software’s automated IT discovery solution, customer organizations have identified 20 percent more assets then manual inventory approaches, and the tool is faster, more accurate, and costs less. Once in place, BMC Atrium Discovery – an automated IT discovery solution – maintains a precise picture of the state of the IT environment from day to day. This allows project progress to be monitored, provides a continuously updated view of what changed incorrectly in the en-vironment when incidents occur, and assists with necessary re-planning. The solution also provides ongoing assurance that as changes occur in the data center, data quality is maintained for coverage of all the servers, completeness of the data, and accuracy of the data.
Proper planning is paramount to a successful migration; however, projects often are scoped within a short timeframe. This can be achieved by seeking an automated IT discovery solution that:
Provides a baseline as a service offering, omitting the need for a complex and time-consuming software
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procurement process
Is licensed on a term basis to match the project duration, ensuring you are not left with an unused perpetual
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license for software
Utilizes an agent-less approach, which not only ensures that you capture all servers but also accelerates
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CoNCLusIoNs & RECommENdATIoNs
Empirical evidence shows that designing, planning, and executing any data center UNIX-to-Linux migration project is a complex activity with many moving parts. Automated IT discovery provides an accurate, consistent, and sustainable map of the data center infrastructure and helps teams to factor and plan their goals
accurately. An automated IT discovery approach provides:
A detailed inventory that enables identification of in-scope servers and the required level of analysis to be
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performed for planning
Grouping by cohesive server groups based on applications, services, and workloads to be identified, and
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provides input into prioritization of migration workstreams based on risk, complexity, and the opportunity to obtain the greatest benefit in the shortest time
Server dependencies to proactively mitigate risk of downstream impact on business
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APPENdIX: sTAgE 1 - bAsELINE ToLLgATE CHECkLIsT
Use the following checklist to determine whether you have the necessary and trustworthy data to progress through the baseline tollgate of your UNIX-to-Linux migration project.
1. Accurate inventory of all in-scope server candidates, which includes the following configuration attributes:
HARdWARE Manufacturer
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Model»
Architecture (32/64 bit)»
CPU type (e.g., x86, AMD64, EM64T, IA64, PPC, PA-RISC)
»
Number of CPUs»
Number of cores»
RAM»
Rack Size (RU)
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Power capacity / Heat output
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oPERATINg sysTEm TyPE ANd vERsIoN
Type (Solaris, AIX, NT, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, etc.)
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Version
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Release level (build, kernel, service pack)
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Architecture (32/64 bit)»
sToRAgE REquIREmENTs Local/NAS/SAN»
HBA interfaces»
Firmware»
2. Accurate inventory of software, including version information of software, to enable investigation of current support level on chosen platform and coordinate migration activities and timeline accordingly
3. End-of-life data for software products that are good candidates for migration and can be incorporated into plans to reduce downtime and increase effectiveness
APPENdIX 2: bmC ATRIum dIsCovERy EXAmPLEs
sofTWARE NEARINg ENd of LIfE
Business runs on IT. IT runs on BMC Software.
