ITMD526-Week9-Blog
Why? What? And How? Are the
three most important questions when it comes migrating a data warehouse.
· Why
should the data warehouse need to be migrated?
· What
should be migrated? Whether only specific components or the entire facility?
· How
can the data warehouse be migrated by mitigating the risks?
If the organization that is
planning to migrate its data warehouse has the right answer to these questions,
then migration of data warehouse can be an easy task.
To start with, even before
settling on the specifics or the subtle elements of the relocation, it is vital
to ensure that the movement is in accordance with the objectives or goals of
the company. The top level management of the organization is responsible for
setting the short term and long term goals for the data warehouse migration.
They should along these lines distinguish the short and long-term goals of the
company and how they can be met by the new data warehouse plan.
Analyzing the necessity for
migrating the data warehouse is one of the vital tasks. Relocating a data
warehouse without any purpose is impossible and it is the responsibility of
stakeholders and data warehouse professionals to list down the criteria for
relocating the data warehouse, the drawbacks in the current data warehouse and
what are all the benefits that can be gained by migrating the data warehouse.
Some of the drawbacks and major reasons for migrating data warehouse.
· The
current facility becomes obsolete.
· The
hardware and software in the current data warehouse are very old versions.
· There
is a shortage of power in the current region or the cost of power has increased.
· Data
warehouses are migrated if the organization has stopped providing service to
the current region and moved to a region where its service is provided at a
higher rate.
· If
there is depletion of natural resources due to the presence of the data
warehouse.
· The
organization has planned to upgrade its database from physical to cloud
technology reducing the space of servers.
· The
company has decided to move to a much smaller space.
· The
loss of the data warehouse is higher that than the profit.
· End-of-lease
of the current facility.
A successful ongoing project
can turn into a terrible failure if it goes into the hand of wrong people. Even
with a skilled labor set, the migration has gone sour in the past. So, it is
highly important to recruit the right persons to the right tasks.
Recruiting specialized
persons for the project is the responsibility of the data warehouse managers.
The manager should analyze the needs of the project and list down the teams
that he requires to achieve the movement and the number of employees
required for each team. Below are some of the skills that a data warehouse
manager exhibits:
· Data
warehouse is all about organizing. Without proper planning and design, it is
very difficult to maintain the data warehouse and its resources. Organizational
skill is the first and foremost important skill required by a data
warehouse manager.
· A
data warehouse manager with self-motivation will lead his team
and enthusiastically find out ways to mend his team and the data warehouse.
· Apart
from just managing the team, a data warehouse manager should exhibit confidence
and leadership qualities to motivate the staff and impart the
same to them.
· A
data warehouse manager should have the maturity to handle
multiple clients, multi-regional data warehouses and critical situations.
· A
data warehouse manager should have a significant level of work
experience. The more the experience, the more stress-free it becomes to
solve problems within short timeliness.
Some of the teams that would
are mandatory for data warehouse migration project are:
· Project
management team.
· Requirement
analysis team.
· IT
team.
· Risk
management team.
· Deployment
team.
· Cost
budgeting team.
· Networks
& security team.
· Disaster
Recovery team.
· Operations
management team.
Experience demonstrates that
Data warehouse Migration projects have a tendency to fall flat when they try to
work on different business and specialized issues in the meantime. To overcome
failure, it is important to plan in detail every single process of migrating a data
warehouse well in advance. Experience indicates that project managers begin
their preparations 18 months before the actual migration. Planning is the key
to a successful move and a proper planning assures almost 50% success in
migration. The plan has to be created in such a way that there should not be
any impact on the current business during the migration process. Create a
project plan that covers the process in a step by step method. The key
resources required to complete this project should also be planned along with
the process planning. Analyze the factors that will limit the relocation,
outline the scope of the project, frame an estimation, scale a timeline for
completing the project, find the apt location to relocate the data warehouse,
analyze the workforce required to complete the project, list out the hardware
and software requirements, plan the logistics for physically moving the
hardware safely, plan on different levels of testing and finally prepare a
disaster recovery plan.
Once the project is planned
and all plan approvals are processed, then comes the design phase. Designing
the project is as important as planning it. There are various levels and
phases of design that need to be implemented for a successful data warehouse migration.
The main criteria that are
considered for target data warehouse and Application design are:
Ø Design
a facility that satisfies the current needs and also has enhancements for
future endeavors.
Ø The
current status of the applications, whether they are in production state,
development state, testing state or obsolete state.
Ø Obsolete
hardware and software that requires upgrading.
Ø Total
space area required for the servers.
Ø Total
area required for the entire infrastructure.
Ø The
dependencies that are created by shared data warehouses.
Ø The
points of failure that exist currently.
Ø Power
and cooling systems.
Ø Design
a proper testing phase
Ø Type
of Security and network capacity.
Ø Requirement
for storage of equipment.
Ø Backup
and recovery design.
The location of the proposed
data warehouse should be selected well in advance. Numerous factors should be
considered before selecting the best site for the new data warehouse, so it is
best to start assessing the site once the migration decision is made by the
stakeholders. Some of the factors to be considered for site selection are:
· The geographic
location of the proposed site should have less or no history of
natural disasters and the climate should be friendly for the data warehouse.
· Electricity is
the supreme requirement for the data warehouse. The new location should not
have scarce electricity and the cost of power should be affordable.
· Since
most data warehouses will be clustered over the network, the new site should
have significant telecommunication services.
· The
tax rates of the location should be affordable by the company.
· The
site should be located in an eco-friendly location so that there are no
hindrances in constructing the data warehouse.
· The
location should be commutable to transport all the equipment and construction
materials.
If all the above criteria
are satisfied and once all approvals are in place, begin the site design.
Once the goals are
determined and the respected teams are formed, analyze the requirements of each
and every phase of the project. Some of the areas that require information are
hardware, software, application, servers, networks and security requirements.
The financial team of the data
warehouse holds the responsibility to set expectations on what sort of
expenditures that can occur to business during the change. The business would
have set targets for high availability on servers, sophisticated network &
storage equipment, and high-level security. To satisfy the business needs it
would cost a significant amount of money and without proper estimation, the
company could face severe loss through hidden expenses. So it is best to
estimate the cost well in advance and frame the budget for both production and
disaster recovery data warehouse.
The quest for another site
(or facilitated or cloud administrations) and the due perseverance to vet the
new co-lo supplier or administration suppliers can take quite a while. It is
essential to permit adequate time for making arrangements for the relocation
and serious milestones for even a basic movement. In addition, if there are
plans to utilize the relocation project to also upgrade or re-engineer the IT
equipment can consume significant time. As the estimate and requirement of the
project increases, there is an increase in time needed to complete the same.
Thus, it is essential to estimate the time needed to complete each task and get
it approved by the senior management to avoid and conflicts and delays.
After completing the
analysis on all aspects of the data warehouse migration project, it is
essential to create a disaster recovery plan or update an existing one. Having
a recovery plan will help in saving time and data if in case of any
discrepancies during relocation. A recovery plan has to be made for both the
infrastructure and the applications. Some of the usual scenarios that require
disaster recovery plan are:
Change in architecture to
meet the updated business needs.
Ø Migrating
to cloud storage from physical.
Ø Resetting
and updating software due to the end of license period or technology becoming
obsolete.
Ø Changing of
network cables from copper to fiber optics.
Ø Relocating
the servers to a new location.
Instead of treating the
migration project as a complex and burden crisis, Data warehouse Migration can
be implemented successfully, mitigating all the risks, by meticulously
following a step by step analysis design and implementation followed in this
document.
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