As companies increase their investment in storage infrastructures to accommodate business growth; technology refreshes and resource balancing become a necessary evil. The underlying task or operation that supports this activity is data migration. Data migration is defined as the process of moving data from one storage platform to another within a storage network. The cause of this action could be a technology refresh or simply because an array is running out of space and applications need to be moved so they can continue to grow uninhibited.

The process of data migration is a complex process. It involves lengthy planning cycles, coordination and execution between departments and groups. However, the challenges with the way data migrations are performed today are directly related to the fact that there are limited tools available to efficiently and nondisruptively move data.

This paper discusses the importance of implementing network-based volume management and its impact on providing a new way to perform data migrations non-disruptively to hosts and applications. It also discusses Incipient Network Storage Platform (iNSP) software and its impact on performing data migrations nondisruptively.