Zero-Downtime Migration: How TANDsoft Solutions Make it Possible

For HPE NonStop customers, migrations are a constant, and often very daunting, prospect. At any given point, teams may need to be preparing for migrations necessitated by database tokenization or encryption, application updates, operating system or hardware upgrades, and many other efforts.

The key challenge is this: How do you make these migrations happen without incurring downtime or risking data integrity?

Developing code to help manage this process is a massive undertaking. For example, we heard from one team who dedicated more than a year to developing in-house code that could support their migration from Enscribe to SQL/MP—and they were only able to use this code one time.

While tools are available to help with database replication, these solutions don’t assist with other elements that need to be migrated, such as application environments, configuration files, and so on. Further, these solutions don’t address the need to ensure source and target files remain in synch at all times, which is vital to ensuring a smooth, error-free migration.

The Solution: FileSync and FS Compare and Repair

Today, NonStop customers can leverage solutions from TANDsoft that facilitate zero-downtime migrations. Customers can employ these solutions in tandem:

• FileSync. To meet their continuity objectives, leading organizations rely on FileSync, our pioneering replication and synchronization solution. FileSync employs a block-level approach that offers breakthrough speed and scalability. FileSync automatically monitors, replicates, and synchronizes files and application environments between NonStop servers.
• FS Compare and Repair. FS Compare and Repair offers fast, advanced capabilities for ensuring your databases are kept in sync at all times. FS Compare and Repair can validate and repair HPE NonStop Enscribe files, OSS files, and SQL/MP and SQL/MX tables. The solution employs a market-leading, block-level approach that offers breakthrough speed and scalability. In a customer test, the solution did a comparison of 10,000,000 records in 13 seconds and of a 1 TB multi-partitioned file in 10 minutes.

These solutions offer an ideal complement to any online replicator your team may be running in your NonStop environments.

How Our Solutions Fuel Zero-Downtime Migrations

By employing TANDsoft solutions, teams can efficiently manage their migrations, and eliminate the risk of downtime. Here’s an overview of how the process works:

• Through continuous synchronization with an existing source instance, FileSync is used to load, prepare, and synchronize the target environment, including data, programs, configurations, and more.
• Teams can either use a database replicator or FileSync to copy all data changes from the source database on one computer to a target database on another system.
• FileSync and FS Compare and Repair are then used to ensure the target environment and database is consistent with the source.
• Once the target environment is validated, teams can commence with switching over to the new environment.
• Then, as the new application and database start to run in production, FileSync and FS Compare and Repair can ensure that the old source environment is kept in synch with the new instance, so teams can immediately roll back to the prior source environment if needed.

Conclusion

To learn more, be sure to visit the FileSync and FS Compare and Repair pages. In addition, you can join us at these upcoming events:

• 2023 CTUG (Canadian Tandem User Group) Meeting, June 7, 2023
• 2023 VNUG (Viking NonStop User Group) Meeting, October 24 and 25, 2023