Atempo Miria Certified for Nutanix Files Solution

Atempo SAS announced the technical validation by Nutanix of its data migration solution Miria for Migration on the Nutanix Files storage environment.

This offer enables businesses to securely and reliably migrate their data from their previous storage systems to Nutanix Files.

Not being limited to simply switching users to a new storage environment, data migration requires a careful preparatory phase that is crucial to a successful migration. It is also essential to limit data access downtime to minimize the impact on production and users. Atempo’s expertise in the movement of unstructured data between heterogeneous storage led to the certification of Miria for Migration on the Nutanix platform. This validation now makes it possible for Nutanix users to have a solution to accelerate and secure their migration projects, in particular those that require performance and reliability.

This certification was carried out by Nutanix using the latest version of Miria for Migration. With this new version, synchronization workflows can now be configured in a few clicks and monitored in real time, thanks to a new, simple and user-friendly graphical interface.

Key points of Atempo Miria for Migration
During the migration of one file system to another, using its FastScan functions, the software quickly detects created, modified, or deleted objects and provides an ‘incremental synchronization’ with the target. Using processes that can be run in parallel and that are multi-threaded for optimum performance, Miria for Migration adapts to all file sizes (>1KB up to several terabytes) and maintains ACL integrity, thereby providing:

Incremental and automatic file migration between heterogeneous storage
Minimum impact on production and fast cutover to the new storage
Automatic integrity checks on migrated files
Performance optimisation
A single platform to migrate and then secure the new storage if necessary

“Using the NFS and SMB access protocols, the ‘Miria for Migration’ by Atempo solution makes it possible to simply and securely migrate any existing file storage solution to Nutanix Files. Whether migrating production data with specific access availability requirements, or integrity constraints, Miria for Migration significantly reduces migration times and the costs incurred to maintain the original storage,” declares Pascal Potier, pre-sales VP at Atempo.

Comments

We wrote an article about NAS Migration in March 31 and we identified various challenges, trends, solutions and partnerships.

Validation and certification of migration solutions represent a new degree to create a differentiator across vendors. This is a common "virtual" challenge as protocols are standardized for decades. Of course a minimum of reliability is necessary but what is important is the validation when versions of protocols change, especially if users take advantage of migration to deploy and expose their file data with a new version, like moving from NFSv3 to v4 or SMB 2.1 to 3.0.

Atempo has proven for years its data copy engine aka data mover expertise. With Miria product line, it represents a new product family dedicated to demanding environments. Miria for Migration targets unstructured data and any file service exposing NFS or SMB.

As of today, Atempo signs several partnerships: DDN - product named DataFlow -, Huawei, Qumulo and now Nutanix Files. As Qumulo is sold also by HPE and Fujitsu, it offers additional opportunities for the French ISV.

For users it's important to ask file server vendors what they recommend with real examples of practices with factual deployments. Some use internal tools or rely on external enterprise-class products.

This announcement illustrates that Nutanix tries to become serious in file service while Atempo receiving a reasonable number of requests to start such technical validation process. Nutanix also promotes CTera Networks to bring edge presence and leverage global file service technology from the Israeli company. The CTera Edge product comes with its own migration capability.

It turns out that several strategies exist about NAS Migration:

Select a tool for the migration and manage it as a point project, after the migration, remove/uninstall the migration tool.

Enter in the account with that feature and try to stay and grow with the rest of the product line if it exists. This is typically the strategy of Datadobi. But we were surprised recently when Datadobi wrote in a blog post that they support PowerStore, but there is no mention of PowerScale which is the Dell EMC file server product.

Extend the data management presence with a migration module to offer additional value and stay in the account. Players like Atempo, Data Dynamics, Komprise, StrongBox Data, Point Software and Systems, Hammerspace or Starfish do this.

Or pick a file server with a migration tool already embedded. CTera Networks is a n example of that with their Edge filers.

The table below reflects what we can find in the field:

Companies
(for file storage product)

Solutions
(promoted, validated or just seen)

DDN

Atempo with DataFlow

Dell EMC

Datadobi, Data Dynamics

Fujitsu

Atempo for Qumulo

HPE

Atempo for Qumulo

Huawei

Atempo

IBM

Lenovo

Data Dynamics

NetApp

Data Dynamics, Datadobi

Nutanix

Atempo for Nutanix Files

Pure Storage

Komprise

Qumulo

Atempo

VAST Data

Starfish

The challenge or next big opportunity seems to be HPC file storage with open-source or commercial offerings like BeeGFS, Lustre, DDN GRIDScaler and ExaScaler, IBM Spectrum Scale (aka GPFS), Panasas or WekaIO. The first who will offer a robust and fast solution will have a good chance of success.

This NAS migration shows a real battle between vendors both for file server ones but also for data management players.