Overview of the P5 Data Mover

P5 Archive helps to move data to cost-effective tape media from production storage to archive storage. In the process, expensive server storage can be reclaimed while backup times are reduced. Later, this archive storage can be managed with the P5 Data Mover. There are two options for this: 

• Moving: Data is moved from existing to new archive storage. When all data of a volume has been transferred, the volume can be deleted.
• Copying: Data is copied to create redundancy on a new archive storage. The previous archive storage remains unchanged.
   

This new tiered storage concept allows data to be placed on different storage media according to its value, reuse and costs incurred. Data can easily be migrated or copied between storage tiers. A migration plan runs periodically and selects data according to a predefined age.

Filter Based Query

P5 Data Mover helps with the migration and maintenance of data already archived by P5 Archive. LTO tapes age and will need replacing over long periods of time. LTO tape capacities increase, making such a migration very attractive. Customers might wish to migrate some tape-based archive data to a cloud service. 

In order to select which archive data should be migrated, a time-based filter was available in P5 version 7.1. This filter is extended in version 7.2. It's now possible to configure a migration based on an arbitrary query on the archive index. For example, it's now possible to migrate based on a specific directory, or the contents of one or more meta-data fields.

The selection of metadata in particular opens up many possibilities. For example, the data to be migrated can be marked in advance in the index with meta information, which is then specified in the migration plan.

Job History

Another feature helps monitor very large and lengthy migration operations. For this purpose, a job history function has been provided in the migration plan, which displays all jobs already executed on behalf of this plan, so that the daily progress of a migration can be tracked very precisely.