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Non-Disruptive Data Migration (NDM) or PowerMax data mobility on PowerMaxOS 10[6], is designed to help automate the process of migrating hosts and applications to a new VMAX3, VMAX All Flash, or PowerMax array with no downtime.
Data mobility leverages SRDF replication technologies to move the application data to the new array. It also utilizes auto-provisioning, in combination with PowerPath or a supported host multipathing solution, to manage host access to the data during the migration process.
Data mobility can be used both with physical hosts as well as virtual environments such as VMware. Although data mobility utilizes SRDF, it is not a SRDF production topology, rather it is a migration tool, and therefore is not supported with the SRDF SRA. While a migration session is active on a device which is also in an SRDF topology, the SRDF SRA will not work properly. For example, if the SRDF SRA is currently utilized in a two-site SRM solution and the R1 is going to be migrated to a new array with data mobility, while that process is ongoing, the SRDF SRA will fail to recognize the original R1 and R2 pairs. The migration must be completed, and, if not migrated, new Gatekeepers from the new array must be presented to the Solutions Enabler array manager for the R1. Additional steps may be required such as disabling and enabling array pairs. Some customers may find it cleaner to remove all protection groups, recovery plans and array pairs before performing data mobility. After data mobility is complete, the objects can be re-created.[7]
[6] Referred to as data mobility for the remainder of the document.
[7] Migrations may also be performed using Storage vMotion which has the advantage of allowing the user to pre-create the SRM setup so that only a reconfiguration of the protection group and recovery plan would be necessary.