Tuesday 5 July 2011

UNIX to LINUX Migration

This article which I am writing would let you know the things that should be considered before migrating UNIX to Linux

1. Business Objective:
    The motivation among the customers to choose Linux is cost, whether it is driving cost reduction through consolidation of servers or applications or the use of visualization and adaptive infrastructure technologies to increase average server utilization. In all the above cases migration is required only if there is a valid business to do so.
    A new line of business requires new application, escalating hardware maintenance costs, escalating software license or support costs.Hence current cost benefits should be equally factoring in the future opportunities that each option affords.

2. Scope and Availability:   
    The goal might be transition to the Linux,adopting to a virtual environment, upgrading to a later version of the current application, introducing new platform which would be simple according to the project needs.
    Any project should be scoped and planned to an accepted level of risk for the organization.

3. Migration In-house or Outsource:   
    Its all your preference to utilize in-house skills to manage migration or to outsource the project, support for Linux means there are many partnerships available. Hardware vendors wants customers to run Linux and thus provide whitepapers,toolkits,checklists which could be freely downloaded and useful for self assisting analysis
IBM and HP are the two vendors for RHEL Linux.There are Red Hat consultants who can integrate in designing,deploying the best practices.

4. Hardware Options:   
    Depending on the scope of the project, it may be appropriate to retain existing servers, to use redeployed servers, or to provision new servers. X86_64 platforms are providing stunning performance and make up a large portion of Linux platforms.

5. Planning your application:
    you could retain the applications from UNIX to Linux, thus providing the common end-user interface experience.RHEL offers a large application portfolio, which could be later upgraded to take advantage of the functional enhancements.Application could be Database,custom,third-party.