The 3 Sides of a Successful VitalQIP Migration

Changes are underway – many customers of VitalQIP are now looking to find a new centrally managed DNS platform to suit their specific business needs.

While a lot of thought and preparation must go on prior to a migration, the payoff from a good plan is a smooth transition with no service downtime, and more importantly a solution that positions your organization to execute on its strategic objectives. Is your organization looking to migrate from VitalQIP in the future? Continue reading for some key insights into what makes a migration truly successful.

Data

Data is likely the first thing that comes to mind when considering a migration; after all, the main goal of a migration is to have all of your data successfully transferred over into your new system. Something to consider with a data migration is that it is very step-and-repeat – and a fairly time-consuming aspect to your transition.

The ideal scenario here is a multi-pass data migration coupled with data cleansing as it helps to make it go faster and more efficiently. An Adaptive DNS solution like BlueCat focuses on data quality so that common issues such as bad records and invalid addresses are not simply discovered, but corrected as well, allowing the migration to occur with less mud in the road to slow it down. When only validated data passes through, you’re saving yourself from having to do a scrub later on. While many companies offering migration services simply focus on moving data, an organization crafting a successful migration will be far more involved than that.

Automation

Another major component to consider is automation. Many organizations have created a large amount of automation involving VitalQIP, including scripts and other programs, leveraging the QIP CLI, API, and sometimes even VitalQIP’s supporting SQL database. Before a successful migration can occur, it’s essential that all VitalQIP customization and automation is thoroughly analyzed. Knowing why this was done and what it’s for can help determine if these needs can be directly addressed by a service like BlueCat out of the box, or if more digging and scaling is required.

Having experience in this area is key to performing migrations; many of these customizations and automations that have been taken for granted are business-critical. These are the things that must be planned for ahead of time in order for the migration to perform flawlessly and avoid any possibility of system downtime. 

Operations

Working with operations is arguably the most important thing to think about when working towards a migration. Frankly, even the upgrades to the system can become a major concern when operations are not properly considered, and the fear of unnecessary downtime becomes very real. Operations teams need to adapt to their new solution, and they need to migrate over their Standard Operating Procedures and tooling for monitoring as well. Ultimately, you’ll have a smooth migration if you take the time to work with the human part of the equation – people can learn and adjust, it just takes time for some teams that have potentially been doing one thing, one way for a considerable amount of time. This is why BlueCat works closely with operations teams throughout the migration plan to ensure that everyone is on the same page, and through collaboration and training are ready to forge ahead alone once it’s completed.

Keeping the above considerations in mind, BlueCat Solutions Consultants and Migration Architects create and execute their Go-Live plans with the utmost care. The process begins by gaining a thorough understanding of the customer’s environment, then planning out the migration in phases, and then safely testing every step of the way – this is all done to ensure that a migration is carried out exactly how a client needs it to be.

Have any questions, or looking for a little more assistance?

Our experts are ready to help you begin your move from VitalQIP – set up a chat with one of them today.