It’s intelligent, efficient and secure.
Take a look at some hard facts about cloud computing.
1. Over 100 zettabytes of data will be stored in the cloud by 2025. The zettabyte is the equivalent of a billion terabytes (or a trillion gigabytes).
2. Cloud Computing was projected to be worth $371.4 billion. With a compound annual growth rate of 17.5 percent, the market will reach $832.1 billion by 2025.
3. Security (83 percent), managing cloud computing spending (82 percent), and governance (79 percent) are the top three challenges of cloud computing.
4. 61 percent of organizations planned to optimize their cloud costs in 2021, which has been a top priority for five years in a row. Seventy-six percent measure their cloud progress based on cost efficiency and the savings resulting from cloud initiatives.
5. The most important cloud initiative for European organizations is the migration of more workloads to the cloud (70 percent). On the other hand, optimizing current cloud usage to save money (59 percent) and adopting a cloud-first strategy (50 percent) rank next.
Clearly, organizations are increasingly adopting the cloud, private, public, or hybrid cloud deployment models. The first and most difficult step in that journey is migrating on-premises data into the cloud. As a result of the enormous influx of data, most companies rush into their data migration plans. One must remember that data movement into the cloud is more than just ‘lift and shift.’
According to Gartner’s research, 83% of data migrations fail outright or exceed budget and schedule estimates. The following are some reasons why cloud data migration fails:
- Proprietary vendor lock-in
- Lack of migration SME skills
- Labour intensive
- Low knowledge of data estate
Microsoft and Data Dynamics have found a way to address all of the above-mentioned challenges. It’s a perfect collaboration of technology and expertise to help organizations migrate their data into Azure in a quick, easy, and cost-effective manner.
Microsoft Azure and Data Dynamics’ StorageX – With this duo, you can soar to the cloud.
The migration of Virtual Desktop, Virtual Server, High-Performance Compute, Analytics, and many other critical applications to Azure requires transferring tens of terabytes to several petabytes of file data stored on file servers, NAS appliances, and Object Storage. File data migration between heterogeneous platforms requires automated, intuitive, and scalable solutions to eliminate the inherent complexity and risk.
Microsoft has made the journey easier than ever with the Azure File Migration Program sponsorship of Data Dynamics’ StorageX for data migration. As a complement to Azure Migrate, this new program allows users to migrate applications and workloads with large numbers of files, unstructured data, and object storage data into Azure at no cost for the StorageX migration licenses.
Karl Rautenstrauch, Microsoft principal program manager for Storage Partners, in his blog- Azure Storage Blog says, “We intend this new program to help our customers and partners migrate from on-premises and non-Azure deployments of Windows or Linux File Servers, Network Attached Storage, and S3-compliant object stores to Azure Blob Storage, Azure Files, or Azure NetApp Files.” He further adds, “This program is a complement to the Azure Migrate, a portfolio which many Azure customers have used to automate and orchestrate the migration of servers, desktops, databases, web applications, and more to Azure.”
Jurgen Willis, VP, Azure Optimized Workloads and Storage, reiterated in his blog, “Azure Migrate offers a very powerful set of no-cost (or low-cost) tools to help you migrate virtual machines, websites, databases, and virtual desktops for critical applications. You can modernize legacy applications by migrating them from servers to containers and building a cloud-native environment.”
Karl Rautenstrauch and Jurgen Willis confirmed that this partnership between Azure and Data Dynamics’ StorageX enables simple, safe, secure file and object data migration to Azure Storage.
This partnership carries many benefits to Azure customers, including Data Dynamics migration software licensing, onboarding best practices, training, and 24x7x365.
Click here to check out how Data Dynamics utilized the Azure File Migration Program to help one of the world’s seven multinational energy “supermajors” Fortune 50 companies accelerate its net zero emission goals while driving digital transformation.
What makes Data Dynamics’ StorageX so revolutionary!
StorageX is Data Dynamics’ award-winning unstructured data management solution that delivers policy-based data management with no vendor lock-in. It provides aholistic approach to data location optimization and enterprise data Migration.
StorageX Migration is a powerful solution for managing your file storage resources based on industry standards. It uses an automated, scalable, and policy-based engine to ensure your migration runs smoothly and on schedule.
Here’s how StorageX Migration moves your unstructured data to Azure:
- Analytics drives share and export movement based on your data and query criteria. You identify a set of matching shares/exports to be moved and streamline moving them.
- Automated data movement policies facilitate the transfer or migration of SMB/NFS source files across heterogeneous storage resources. Move an entire share or export to a new share or export.
- StorageX gives you automated access control security management for Security Identifiers (SIDs). Make changes to SIDs, remove orphaned SIDs, and preserve SIDs during file movement.
- Cutover Estimation estimates the time required to move your data. Use the estimate to decide when you will “cutover,” when you stop sharing the source and start redirecting users to the file data in the new location.
Unique differentiators
- Speed: Automated, policy-based file data migration for 3X faster migrations, 10x faster productivity, migrate heterogeneous storage resources into Microsoft Azure storage. Minimize disruptions with fast policy-driven cutovers reduce cutover times by more than 90% over other approaches.
- Smart: The ‘smarts’ provided by StorageX enable enterprises to classify unstructured data with context based on intelligent tagging, thus adding structure to the unstructured data. By identifying and tagging workloads, automated policy-driven actions can be taken for appropriate workload placement across local and public cloud environments.
- Versatility: StorageX helps customers manage their data lifecycle, leverage tiering across cloud environments, and provide insight and automation for improved storage operations. Ability to create policies intelligently to move certain data into different cloud storage tiers, including Azure Files (Premium, TX Optimized, Hot, Cool), Azure NetApp Files (Ultra, Premium, Standard), Azure Blob (Premium, Hot, Cool).
StorageX Data Movement capabilities- NAS to NAS (with or without Analysis)
- NAS to Object replication
- NAS to Object archive
- Scalability: With StorageX, you can manage petabyte-scale environments, support 1000s of policies, and scan 10s of billions of files easily from a single management console. StorageX is built for the modern enterprise. It can scale out to meet performance needs and has the flexibility to adapt to complex hybrid, multi-cloud, and legacy environments.
- Security: Automated access control and file security management, including capabilities to preserve, re-permission (SID mapping), or restructure permissions. Provides the ability to identify files that may be at risk due to inadequate access controls.
- Ease of use: Its robust suite of APIs simplifies the migration process by providing templates for policy creation and management that guide best practices. Organizations can also accurately predict migration project completion and meet their MACC targets annually.
- Cost-effective: Migration of unstructured data such as files and object storage data into Azure at no additional cost to the customer
- Comprehensive: StorageX, when used in conjunction with Data Dynamics’ unified data management platform, can help enterprises unlock end to end data management capabilities such as Data Analytics, Security, and Compliance
User friendly: StorageX has the following capabilities:
Here’s a reference architecture for on-premises to Azure and in-Azure deployments of StorageX.
StorageX interoperability matrix
Embark on your cloud migration journey now!
Intelligent. Efficient, Secure.
Leverage intelligent, compliant, policy-based, zero-cost migrations into Azure with StorageX. Click to register for the program or email us azure@datdyn.com or click here to book a meeting.
