Storage upgrades and consolidation are a way of life for the modern IT professional. One of the most challenging but overlooked aspects of an upgrade is data migration, a process that’s not as simple as copying files and other data objects from point A to point B. While many tools have come to market to help with block-to-block transfers, few solutions are designed to maintain application integrity so that the data those applications are linking to remains intact. In fact, fixing this problem is often left to the users themselves. IT professionals need to look for a better answer, and LinkTek believes its LinkFixer Advanced may be that answer.
Links are typically used so that a structured environment can reference unstructured data. An example of a link-heavy application is SharePoint, a semi-structured application essentially surrounding unstructured data with meta-data like author, editor, related customer etc. When a new storage system is implemented and this data is moved to it these links are sometimes broken. The typical reaction is to force the users to fix it, but given the scope of applications that use these links and the frequency of storage refreshes, storage administrators need a better solution.
The scope of the problem is not limited to SharePoint. The adoption of almost any document management system, like OpenText Livelink and EMC Documentum, would be just as susceptible. Plus, linking is now a common feature in basic applications like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Access, Visio, PDFs. AutoCAD, MicroStation, InDesign and PageMaker. And the source of the problem is not limited to a storage refresh either. Any time a file is moved a link can be broken. The causes for these moves can be server upgrades, server consolidations, server name changes, folder reorganizations, as well as the implementation of a file virtualization or archive solution.
LinkFixer Advanced can find broken links, report on them and even repair those links automatically. The solution can scale from hundreds of files on a desktop to millions of files on shared storage. Once the existing broken links are fixed, the links can then be safeguarded in advance, automatically fixing broken links as data is migrated or reorganized in the enterprise.
StorageSwiss Take
Because of the rapid advancements in technology, storage refreshes now occur much more frequently than they used to. IT professionals need to develop a deep bench of tools to make migrations go smoothly and not expect end-users to clean up the mess. Products like LinkTek’s LinkFixer Advanced deserve strong consideration to be on that bench, not only to help with current broken link issues, but to continuously maintain them going forward.
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George Crump is the Chief Marketing Officer at VergeIO, the leader in Ultraconverged Infrastructure. Prior to VergeIO he was Chief Product Strategist at StorONE. Before assuming roles with innovative technology vendors, George spent almost 14 years as the founder and lead analyst at Storage Switzerland. In his spare time, he continues to write blogs on Storage Switzerland to educate IT professionals on all aspects of data center storage. He is the primary contributor to Storage Switzerland and is a heavily sought-after public speaker. With over 30 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS, SAN, Virtualization, Cloud, and Enterprise Flash. Before founding Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest storage integrators, where he was in charge of technology testing, integration, and product selection.
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