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Case Study

How To Get Buy-In: Balancing Tradition and Novelty in Data Center Migration

9 Aug 2023

Don’t you have enough to deal with at work without a bunch of users digging in their heels and arguing about including their data in that much-needed migration to your new data center or wherever it is you’re migrating? You know, the one that you’ve been planning for months and everybody has been notified about. Luckily, you’re pretty level-headed, so you decide to try talking — nicely at first — to find out what their bugaboo is, instead of throwing a full-blown tantrum, which has (hopefully) not been witnessed since you were three.

Man pointing thumbs down in the office

Overcoming opposition may be easier than you think.

After much polite discussion, it transpires that these users have a bunch of data that they declare may absolutely, categorically, most definitely not be migrated due to their concerns about data loss. They’ve done their “homework,” they tell you — which simply means they’ve been googling — and suddenly they’re migration experts.

They earnestly inform you that they know there’s a huge risk to the integrity of their data and they are, at this point, willing to defend it with their lives. Well, ain’t that just fine and dandy? What are you supposed to say to that?

An Academic Migration

Believe it or not, a similar situation recently arose at Michigan State University and their IT department handled it very cleverly.

The IT department had embarked upon a project to migrate data from an on-premises server to a new data center. Everyone concerned was on board, with one exception. There were distinct rumblings of mistrust coming from a group of engineers. They did not want their CAD files moved. Nope, no way. They had zero interest in the planned migration, for one (pretty sound) reason: They weren’t willing to run the risk of losing any data — not a single iota of it — and were stubbornly resisting the migration.

Convincing a number of headstrong engineers to agree to the migration must have been about as tricky as teaching a snail to do backflips.

Don’t get us wrong. This wasn’t a sit-in protest or something akin to John and Yoko being interviewed from their bed for all the world to see. For the IT department, however, convincing a number of headstrong engineers to agree to the migration must have been about as tricky as teaching a snail to do backflips. That is, until one IT guy, Chris Doerr, had a bright idea.

We asked Chris, IT Support at MSU IT Services, to tell us about their project and what they hoped to solve with LinkFixer Advanced™. Chris says, “We needed to migrate several TB of CAD files from an on-prem local filer, to our new data center, while maintaining the internal links in the files.”

Instead of using logic, personal experience, and everything short of bribery to convince the concerned engineers, Chris figured he would simply show them, in real-time, how well-protected their data would be.

University-level Show and Tell

Chris explained how LinkFixer Advanced helped to finally get the engineers’ agreement. “The product’s entire purpose is to preserve links in files, and it worked great. The product was key to getting buy-in from the engineering group that did not want their files moved,” Chris explained. “Once I was able to show the group how things were preserved, they were onboard.”

Two happy men working together

A simple demo may be the key to buy-in.

The truth is we often get feedback on how LinkFixer Advanced saves time, reduces disruption, ensures data is intact and available to end-users immediately after a migration, and that sort of thing, all of which we naturally love to hear.

But using it to get buy-in from resistant parties was a novel — and very clever — method of using LinkFixer Advanced to achieve the desired result.

Breaking With Tradition

When it comes to the problem of missing data following a migration, we know that the traditional route is to either deploy a team to find and fix the broken links or to use a search and replace script to try and work through the data, one broken link at a time, until the missing data is restored. It’s a common practice. But it’s not the best practice.

The absolute best way to deal with this problem is by prevention. Why? Because prevention circumvents the downtime, the potential loss of revenue, the end-user complaints, the unhappy bosses, the impact on productivity and the general disruption caused by missing data due to broken links.

Protecting your links in advance of your migration is like dodging a bullet.

Protecting your links in advance of your migration is like dodging a bullet. All of the above issues simply go “poof” and disappear. Can you imagine the relief of getting through a data migration without any broken links and the ensuing mayhem they can cause?

Tradition is great for all sorts of things, but when it comes to data migration, you want modern technology to make it as smooth and pain-free as possible. That’s the best reason to have LinkFixer Advanced on your side.

Tradition is great for all sorts of things, but when it comes to data migration, you want modern technology to make it as smooth and pain-free as possible.

Damage Already Done?

We know it’s possible that you may have already completed a data migration before you found out about LinkFixer Advanced. The damage is already done and now you’re dealing with the downtime, the potential loss of revenue, the end-user complaints, the unhappy bosses, the impact on productivity and the general disruption caused by missing data due to broken links.

Typically, you’d be faced with deploying a team to find and fix the broken links or coming up with a search and replace script to laboriously work through the impacted data, one broken link at a time, until the data is restored. But, frankly, there’s a better way — even in this situation.

Not only is LinkFixer Advanced your go-to for preventing data loss due to broken links, but it’s also the ace up your sleeve when it comes to repairing broken links and instantly restoring missing data after a migration

What’s Better Than Free?

If you find yourself curious about what kind of shape your links are in, check out Link Reporter™ This free tool offers you amazing insight into the state of your links — enterprise-wide — by scanning your data and reporting back to you in detail.

Three comprehensive reports offer you an unparalleled overview of your linked data, but we’d like to take a second to clarify a point first: parent and child files.

A parent file is a file that contains one or more links. A child file is a file that is pointed to by a link in a parent file. See? Literally a second. Now let’s get back to those reports.

  • The Broken Link Report lists all your parent files that contain one (or more) broken links. It details which links are broken in each file.
  • The Regular Report lists every single parent file along with all the child files it links to. This is a truly comprehensive report of your files.
  • The Cross Reference Report lists each child file, plus a list of all the parent files that point to it. This tells you, for example, whether it’s safe to delete a particular child file.

To find out more about how Link Reporter and LinkFixer Advanced can help you save time and ensure a smoother migration, call a Service Consultant at 727-442-1822 or visit LinkTek.com, where you can access your free trial version (no credit card required) — which you can craftily deploy to help achieve buy-in if you need it!

Want an ace up your sleeve when it comes to repairing broken links and instantly restoring missing data after a migration?

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