Case Study: InMage Enables Successful, Seamless Large-Scale Data Migration Project for Applied Discovery (Lexis Nexis)

Applied Discovery is a worldwide electronic discovery leader offering multinational collection, early case assessment (ECA), data analytics, processing, document review, and production services for law firms, corporations and government agencies. Founded in 1998 and acquired by LexisNexis in 2003, Applied Discovery leverages an extensive portfolio of discovery management technology, legal expertise, support staff, and research to empower clients to confidently and affordably respond to every type of complex litigation and document intensive matter.

Native Replication Tools Fall Short of Data Migration Needs

Applied Discovery is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington with its main data center located in south Seattle. The IT infrastructure is comprised primarily of Windows servers and storage systems from Hitachi Data Systems. The company needed to complete an internal data migration comprising about 170 servers and 250 – 300 TB of data. The expected timeframe for project completion was a year or more.

Capacity expansion issues were the primary driver behind the data migration project. Applied Discovery was quickly running out of storage on its storage area networks (SAN) and had to move data onto new storage systems. Although the company used native replication tools, it would take some time since all the systems would have to be virtualized behind the new storage system.

“Once the native tool was used to move data to the new storage system, we would then have to detach and de-virtualize all the storage from each of the systems,” said Kishore Dahlstrom, Systems and Storage Architect for Applied Discovery.  “This process would add additional time to our migration plan. The native tool is extremely fast when moving data from one storage system to another once the storage is virtualized, but for this migration we felt that using InMage would be a better option.”

Applied Discovery also had to find a way to migrate data without bringing down servers, incurring downtime and negatively impacting the business. Note – both InMage and native tools required some downtime in order to prepare for the initial replication and after replication is completed.

“The native replication tools provided in our existing storage systems would have taken a bit longer and been little bit riskier,” continues Dahlstrom. “A few years ago, any time we would expand, anywhere from 10 to 100 GB, native replication tools required us to create the exact same disk size to copy data from one SAN volume to another. This was extremely time-consuming, and if the disk types were different types such as SATA and FC, the block sizes could never be matched up. This is no longer an issue but at the time we had to use InMage to get around the block size differences. I would bet money that many other companies with modular or enterprise storage systems without virtualization or native tool to migrate data would experience this headache.”