Cisco Cisco Data Mobility Manager Guida Informativa
Q&A
© 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
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Cisco Data Mobility Manager Q&A
Q.
What is Cisco
®
Data Mobility Manager (DMM) and what does it do?
A.
Cisco DMM is a storage area network (SAN) fabric-based software application that facilitates
movement of block data from a source block device to a destination block device. Cisco DMM
is designed to allow a storage administrator to complete the migration process without the
application server outages typically needed when the storage subsystem is reconfigured.
Because servers are administratively owned by systems administrators, and because a server
outage affects the application, a storage administrator must coordinate any server outage with
the systems and database administrators. This coordination is a very time-consuming
process, and the storage administrator is not in control of the schedule to complete the
migration task. Because Cisco DMM, when used in conjunction with the Cisco SAN Device
Virtualization (SDV) feature, offers zero-outage capability, a storage administrator now has
complete control over the data migration task and can complete data migration in a timely
manner.
Q.
Why do data center storage administrators need Cisco DMM?
A.
Storage administrators may need to move data from an existing storage Logical Unit Number
(LUN) to a new LUN in several situations, such as when a disk array is replaced. With new
disk array technologies becoming available every few years, some companies incorporate the
latest and best of array technologies as soon as they become available, and all data on an
existing array must be moved to a new array before the application servers can access the
new array. Another situation that entails movement of data is capacity reconfiguration. When
the amount of data exceeds the capacity of an existing storage LUN, the LUN needs to be
expanded. This capacity reconfiguration may require the movement of data from the existing
LUN to a new and larger LUN.
Q.
What hardware and software components are needed to run Cisco DMM?
A.
The main component of Cisco DMM runs on the Cisco MDS 9000 Storage Services Module
(SSM). This module must be available in the fabric. Neither the host initiator nor the target
array needs to be directly connected to the Cisco MDS 9000 SSM card. The Cisco MDS 9000
SSM fits into the Cisco MDS 9216i and 9222i Multilayer Fabric Switches and the Cisco MDS
9506, 9509, and 9513 Multilayer Directors. The Cisco MDS 9000 family switch that houses the
Cisco MDS 9000 SSM card used for Cisco DMM must be running Cisco MDS 9000 SAN-OS
Software Version 3.2(1) or later. The switches to which the existing and new storage arrays
are connected must also be running Cisco MDS 9000 SAN-OS Software Version 3.2(1) or
later, because Cisco DMM needs the Fibre Channel Redirect feature available on the switches
to which the arrays are connected.
Q.
Why use Cisco DMM when other solutions are available?
A.
Several solutions are currently available to the end user. These solutions can be categorized
into host-based, array-based, and appliance-based solutions.
●
Host-based solutions are available as basic tools such as a dump command, or they can
be more sophisticated such as a volume manager. The negative aspect of host-based
solutions is that the data migration task competes with the application for CPU and