Replacing PV660F with CX300

Are you planning on migrating the data between the two systems?  If so how much data?

Your best option would be to use our Enterprise Deployment Team or Dell Professional Services to perform this for you.

Apparently all the SAN specialists are "busy" so I have no choice but to use these forums.

Hiya,

I've just finished doing a migration from a 660f & 224f to a CX-400.

There are a million ways of doing it, in the end I had a "staging" server attached to the CX-400 with the newly configured LUN assigned to it.  I then used ROBOCOPY to copy the data across the LAN to the new LUN on the staging server while leaving the existing server in place and running, after the copy I used ROBOCOPY to sync the data and made sure it was all copied correctly across (by the way, ROBOCOPY will copy permissions whereas normal copy will not).

Once I was happy, I arranged a couple of hours downtime, removed the server from the 660, unbound the LUN from the staging server, attached the old server to the CX-400 then bound the LUN to it.....all done with no hassle.

I would advise trying it first though as it is not a "supported" way of doing this - I have been told that you can't unbind a LUN from one server and bind it to another without corrupting the data....I did it with W2K file, Exchange and SQL servers and it's been perfect.

Good luck and enjoy the performance boost from the CX range, it is a much better product than the 660 range,

James

The easiest is to hook the CX400 up directly to the server on the 660F.  Load Navi Agent/CLI (and powerpath if you need to).  You might be limited by PCI slots, but you really only need 1 HBA for the CX400 to get a lun.

Connect temporary luns to the server, assign new drive letters and copy data over  - expect 10-20GB/hr for a local copy.  ROBOCOPY is free, but a Dell Services engagement turned me onto a great and low cost tool: SecureCopy.  Just make sure you have a method to check files counts and byte sizes for a 100% copy.  We usually kick everyone off the server (stop the SERVER service and any application services) and do a final "sync".  Do the sync and then "flip" the drive letters (or even, unassign the letter from the 660F storage- the partitions will still be there if needed, but not accessable).  Reboot.  New storage with old data now used.