An in-depth review of Carbonite Migrate

Carbonite Migrate is a tool that enables its users to migrate their workloads to and from any environment by tackling two notorious pain points for users when it comes to data migrations: downtime and data loss.

SEE: Data migration testing checklist: Through pre- and post-migration (TechRepublic Premium)

Users who decide to work with Carbonite Migrate particularly appreciate its vendor-agnostic approach and real-time results. In this in-depth review of Carbonite Migrate, we’ll discuss some of its key features, how it can be used and possible alternatives.

Jump to:

An introduction to Carbonite Migrate

Carbonite Migrate is a data and systems migration solution that supports migration over great distances with near-zero downtime and low risk. It is designed to work with any hypervisor and cloud platform, and it is also compatible with Windows Server and several Linux-based operating systems.

Carbonite Migrate simplifies migration through streamlined processes and automated steps that reduce human error and the amount of resource input needed to achieve migration goals. The tool has several built-in safeguards and automations that focus on high-quality data replication and migration testing.

SEE: A guide to effective data migration testing (TechRepublic)

Carbonite Migrate is one of many business solutions that Carbonite offers; the company primarily specializes in cloud backup and storage solutions.

Carbonite Migrate features

Real-time replication

With Carbonite Migrate, users can carry out real-time replication. The administrator can choose the source and target servers after installation. Carbonite Migrate offers options ranging from fully-automated cloud orchestration workflows to DIY using Carbonite’s robust software development kit, giving administrators choices on how to execute their migrations.

After it’s initiated, Carbonite Migrate executes an initial mirror of data, applications or complete servers to start synchronization.

Flexible and complex migration workloads

Carbonite Migrate enables users to execute the migration of any server workload to any target destination. They can migrate systems and data between, to and from any combination of cloud-based, physical and virtual environments.

The tool specifically has capabilities to handle complex SAP migrations to the cloud, which are traditionally challenging to execute. Users can migrate SAP workloads of any size at scale, including workloads of 50TB or more.

SEE: Best practices for data center migration (TechRepublic)

Carbonite Migrate makes it easier to carry out lift-and-shift and optimization migrations without service disruption. This saves precious time for organizations by lowering the possibility of outages and data loss. Carbonite Migrate offers network compression as an advanced feature to ensure the overall resource usage during the migration is reduced.

System availability with no vendor lock-in

The simplicity and repeatability Carbonite Migrate offers empower IT teams to switch platforms without affecting system availability. It can switch between, to and from public clouds, meaning end users do not have to deal with lock-in. Carbonite Migrate provides freedom from hypervisor, hardware and vendor lock-in, enabling organizations to exercise flexibility in their IT investments.

Minimal downtime

Carbonite Migrate replicates source systems to the target, with AES 256-bit encryption to guarantee the security of data in flight. With Carbonite’s migration strategies, it is possible to carry out test cutovers without impacting production systems.

Source systems are available for end users to use until the final cutover; cutovers take seconds to a handful of minutes. Users can initiate the cutover to the target automatically or manually after they complete the initial synchronization.

Throughout the migration process, Carbonite Migrate continues to replicate changes from the source while automatically preserving an accurate copy of data and configuration settings on the target server.

Easy-to-use console

Through an easy-to-use console, Carbonite Migrate delivers automated and orchestrated migration configuration and management.

Carbonite Migrate use cases

Lift-and-shift cloud migrations

More and more organizations want to make the cloud the sole point of execution for their applications. Carbonite Migrate enables this “lift and shift” of business applications and systems to the cloud through automated byte-level transfers, automated cutover and instant restart.

Simplified cloud bursting

For organizations that want to maintain on-premises infrastructure as their primary environment and use the cloud only to cater to unpredictable demand spikes, Carbonite Migrate offers a solution to simply and effectively achieve this cloud bursting. When a bursting strategy falls short, Carbonite Migrate provides a migration strategy that ensures cloud copies are automatically updated in real-time to simplify cloud bursting.

Multicloud data management

Carbonite Migrate is capable of automatically managing the distribution of data to and from different cloud providers. This feature is especially valuable for customers who want the option to use different providers for different functions on the same dataset, all while ensuring all cloud copies are routinely updated.

SEE: How to handle a multicloud migration: Step-by-step guide (TechRepublic)

Carbonite Migrate cost

Carbonite has not publicly listed pricing information for its Migrate product. The provider encourages prospective customers to sign up for a demo or talk to a member of its team to learn more about pricing and package options.

Alternative tools

Skyvia

Skyvia is a software-as-a-service data platform for simply and rapidly solving diverse data tasks without coding. It covers data integration, workflow automation, dashboards and reporting, cloud data backup, data management with SQL, and more. Skyvia’s migration features help users automatically transfer business data between cloud applications in a few clicks.

Help Desk Migration Services

Help Desk Migration is a service that enables the movement of data from one platform to another without special code or scripts. It supports more than 300 help desk platforms and provides seamless data migration while maintaining all relationships between tickets and other records.

AWS Migration Hub

AWS Migration Hub provides a unified location for assessing, planning and tracking application migrations on AWS and partner solutions. It gives customers the tools to simplify and accelerate migration and modernization goals. More specifically, AWS Migration Hub enables users to assess and plan migrations, automate lift-and-shift migrations to AWS and refactor legacy applications.

Rivery

Rivery delivers a SaaS platform that offers a unified solution for extract-load-transfer pipelines, data operations and workflow orchestration. Its cloud migration solution enables users to complete their digital transformation with the ability to migrate databases to the cloud through a few clicks. Rivery automates cloud data migration for all kinds of databases, whether cloud-based or on-premises.

Read next: Top data integration tools (TechRepublic)