Moving data within a cloud is easy - that’s what 40 Gigabit Ethernet is for - but getting that data there in the first place can prove tricky. How tough the process is depends on several factors, including the amount of data to be moved and how much time is available to move it.

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One approach which data migration admins might consider is to move the data manually across a network, but it's a time-consuming process and even when the bandwidth is 1 Gbps pipe, the best-case scenario is that it will take a little more than two hours to transmit 1 TB of data. To move 1 PB would take nearly three months.

To help decrease transmission time, some Cloud Service providers offer a Data Seeding option in which a disk drive or other appliance is physically sent to the customer who then backs up data locally and ships the disk drive back to the provider. The customer’s data is then copied to provider’s servers, ‘seeding’ the customer’s initial full migration (or backup). Once this process has been accomplished, future backups are incremental, and the customer’s servers only back up blocks of data that have changed since the initial seed was completed.

This is where RiverMeadow comes in. We support Data Seeding with our unique Data Only Migration capability. You can now seed your initial full migration of data to the Cloud and use our Data Only Migration capability to sync up the deltas. Once your data has been moved across to the cloud you do not need to run a full migration again. With our Data Only Migration feature you can run subsequent incremental backups to sync just the new or changed data.

Having the power and flexibility to migrate just the data of an application across platforms, across clouds and across OS versions without having to carry out a full migration means you can focus your efforts and network bandwidth on only those elements of your migration that are truly needed. This, in turn, gives you a much greater likelihood of meeting your cutover deadline.

Transferring a sizable amount of data to the cloud can take days, weeks or even years. RiverMeadow’s Data Only Migration capability supports Data Seeding to give you the best of both worlds: upload large data volumes to the cloud as a ‘one-off’ – and update your dynamic data in real time.

Contact our trusted Cloud Migration Experts here to discuss our Data Only Migration capability in more detail. Or why not see our powerful SaaS Cloud Migration Platform in action? Click here to request your personal demo.