Preface

This book is designed to help customers and Sun staff strategically transition the people, processes, and technologies in IT environments to the Solaris ¢ Operating System (Solaris OS). By explaining how you can use Sun's migration methodology to realize the benefits that can result from a migration effort, we hope to minimize or eliminate the reluctance many people have to undertaking UNIX migration projects. While we focus on UNIX server migrations, much of the methodology and many of the best practices presented in this book apply to any migration to the Solaris environment.

Using the methodology presented in this book, you should be able to tackle projects ranging from the smallest data conversion to the largest legacy migration project with a repeatable and systematic approach that ensures predictability and success. Along the way, we provide guidance to help you avoid some of the pitfalls that are common to migration projects. The methodology and best practices include:

• Assessing the current environment to migrate

• Planning for a migration project

• Architecting a new target environment

• Implementing a migration by using available tools and processes

• Managing the newly migrated environment

To illustrate the benefits, costs, and requirements of a migration project, we provide the following detailed case studies:

• A small software development company, migrating from Linux to the Solaris environment

• A simple, custom-written application that uses a Sybase database, migrating to the Solaris environment and an Oracle database

• A ledger solution from the financial services industry, migrating from the HP/UX platform to the Solaris environment