Best Practices for Migrating Historical Backup Data to UniSpace

Overview

Replacing an existing data protection solution is a highly complex and systematic endeavor, often requiring months of detailed planning and phased execution. During this process, enterprises face numerous challenges, including ensuring business continuity, achieving architectural compatibility, adjusting personnel and processes, and mitigating potential compliance and security risks.

When properly planned, the migration project is not merely a technological replacement—it serves as a strategic opportunity to restructure the organization’s data protection framework. By adopting Yuanshuo UniSpace, enterprises can comprehensively optimize existing data protection and cybersecurity processes, improve data availability and system resilience, and build a forward-looking, scalable data trust platform that better supports future business growth and digital transformation goals.

How to Implement Yuanshuo UniSpace Data Protection Platform

Architecture Design

Yuanshuo architects will work closely with you to conduct an in-depth analysis of your current data protection solution, assess critical business needs, and design a secure and scalable architecture tailored to your data protection and cyber resilience objectives.

Implementation and Deployment

Yuanshuo’s implementation specialists will efficiently deploy the UniSpace platform and its associated data protection agents to ensure rapid go-live, enabling your IT team to focus on core business tasks without being distracted by the platform migration process.

Operations Handover

Yuanshuo offers 24/7 managed services for data protection and cyber resilience, ensuring secure and stable remote monitoring and management of the UniSpace environment. Throughout this process, your internal team can gradually take over platform operations under the guidance of Yuanshuo’s dedicated migration team, enabling a smooth transition in operations.

Localized Support

Yuanshuo’s localized support team aligns platform capabilities with your business objectives, proactively monitors system performance, and continuously provides professional recommendations to ensure the UniSpace solution delivers maximum value.

Data Import Services

Yuanshuo provides convenient data import services to migrate existing backup data from legacy systems to the UniSpace platform. This includes preserving historical restore points, simplifying the decommissioning of old systems, and accelerating the integration of old and new platforms.

Phases for Migrating Historical Backup Data to the UniSpace Platform

Migrating legacy backup data to the Yuanshuo UniSpace platform is a process that requires meticulous planning and step-by-step execution. Yuanshuo recommends progressing through the following five phases to ensure efficiency, control, and business continuity throughout the migration:

1 Discover

In this phase, Yuanshuo consultants will comprehensively collect information about the current backup environment and develop a preliminary migration strategy based on business architecture.

Key assessments include:

• Short-term retention data typically does not need to be migrated and can remain on the legacy platform to avoid unnecessary resource use.
• Medium- and long-term backup data should be evaluated for migration based on business importance and compliance requirements.

The final scope and strategy of the data migration will be jointly determined by the Yuanshuo consultants and the client to ensure alignment with practical needs.

2 Options

Yuanshuo will work with the client to present all viable migration methods and classify data based on business value.

The goal of this phase is to:

• Identify which data should be migrated and which can be retained;
• Ensure users can efficiently query and restore data on the UniSpace platform both before and after migration.

Through deep collaboration with the client, a scientifically grounded and executable migration scope will be established.

3 Define

Based on the outcomes of the previous phases, the Yuanshuo team will design a backup platform architecture tailored to the client’s environment using UniSpace and define detailed migration workflows.

Migration process design priorities include:

• Maximizing automation or semi-automation to reduce manual tasks.
• Controlling costs and shortening the switchover period.
• Supporting differentiated migration approaches for different data types through locally deployable migration toolkits.

4 Plan

A detailed migration project plan will be created, mapping legacy backup configurations to their new counterparts in UniSpace to ensure a smooth platform transition.

Yuanshuo’s migration workflow tools will be installed and fine-tuned in the client environment, enabling automated or semi-automated deployment and migration for various data types, with clear and controllable procedures.

5 Migrate

After preliminary testing and validation, the formal migration phase begins.

Migration services include:

• Executing batch data migrations through pilot verification.
• Performing necessary manual interventions for special data or exceptions to ensure the completeness and accuracy of the migration.
• Assisting users with recovery validation on UniSpace after migration to confirm that all data is accessible and usable.

Supported Scope of the Yuanshuo UniSpace Migration Workflow

The current Yuanshuo UniSpace migration workflow supports the following backup software and data types, as detailed in the table below:

Supported Backup Software	Supported Data Type
File System	VMware
Commvault	✅
NetBackup	✅

Notes:

The Yuanshuo UniSpace migration workflow is capable of directly reading Commvault/NetBackup metadata and retrieving corresponding backup records. It restores supported data types to a staging area (Landing Zone), from which the data is then re-backed up by Yuanshuo UniSpace—preserving original recovery entry points as much as possible. This workflow requires necessary adaptation within the customer environment to support semi-automated or fully automated historical backup data migration.

✅ indicates: After debugging and pilot testing, fully automated migration is possible with minimal manual intervention.

♻️ indicates: After debugging and pilot testing, semi-automated migration is possible, involving partial manual effort.

Historical Backup Data Migration Workflow Overview

Yuanshuo UniSpace provides a standardized, semi-automated migration workflow designed to efficiently and securely import legacy backup data into the UniSpace platform while retaining original recovery entry points and user experiences.

The overall migration process includes three key steps:

1. Automatic Metadata Discovery
   The UniSpace migration workflow automatically connects to the legacy backup system (e.g., Commvault, NetBackup), extracts metadata from the Master Server or CommServe, and identifies backup jobs and their associated historical data to be migrated.
2. Data Recovery to Landing Zone
   Based on data types (e.g., file systems, databases, virtualization environments), appropriate restoration methods are used to recover the data to a Landing Zone. Original backup tags and key metadata are preserved to ensure traceability and recoverability after migration.
3. Re-backup to UniSpace Platform
   Data in the Landing Zone is re-backed up to the UniSpace platform, retaining original recovery information (e.g., backup timestamp, original restore client), ensuring a seamless transition in recovery paths and user operations.

Required Resource

To ensure a smooth migration process, the following key resources must be prepared in advance:

• Legacy Backup System Environment
  Including Master Server, Media Servers, and associated backup media (e.g., tape libraries, disk libraries), to ensure access to original data and support for restoration operations.
• Landing Zone Resources
  Based on data volume, type, and desired concurrency level, a staging server and storage space with sufficient compute and capacity must be prepared. The configuration of the Landing Zone directly affects migration efficiency and duration. As a temporary space, migrated data stored in UniSpace will be cleared from the Landing Zone. After migration, the Landing Zone resources can be repurposed as UniSpace storage nodes for backup and recovery use. Yuanshuo consultants should assist in evaluating and planning the appropriate size.

Yuanshuo UniSpace Integrated Platform

The Yuanshuo UniSpace product includes an integrated platform solution that allows takeover of Commvault environments. Through a unified UniSpace interface, users can view Commvault backup jobs and directly restore historical backup data (MySQL/Oracle) managed by Commvault. This integration is particularly suitable for scenarios where historical data migration is not required. Instead, the UniSpace integrated platform directly manages Commvault historical data for tasks such as viewing and recovery.

UniSpace & Commvault Dual-Engine Solution

• **Unified Management：**A key advantage of the integrated solution is unified operations and maintenance management, significantly reducing the workload associated with managing two separate platforms. Additionally, backup data managed by Commvault (including MySQL and Oracle databases) can be restored directly through the UniSpace platform.

1. Unified Data Protection Policy Management

Through deep integration with Commvault, UniSpace enables centralized management of data protection policies. Enterprises can establish consistent backup, recovery, archiving, and disaster recovery policies within the UniSpace platform and automatically apply them across all data sources managed by Commvault. This integration ensures consistency and efficiency of data protection strategies while reducing management complexity and error rates.

2. Seamless Data Backup and Recovery

UniSpace incorporates Commvault’s data backup and recovery capabilities, allowing seamless protection of various types of data, including files, databases, and virtualized environments. Administrators can conveniently monitor backup job statuses and quickly restore historical backup data from Commvault (Oracle, MySQL) as needed through the UniSpace platform. This integration not only enhances the efficiency of backup and recovery operations but also ensures data integrity and recoverability.

3. Intelligent Data Analytics and Monitoring

The integration between UniSpace and Commvault extends to intelligent data analytics and monitoring. The UniSpace platform collects and visualizes backup, recovery, and disaster recovery task data managed by Commvault. Through intelligent analytics, it provides administrators with detailed reports and visual dashboards. These insights help administrators promptly identify potential issues and take proactive measures to ensure data security and business continuity.

For more information about Yuanshuo UniSpace migration services, please contact the Yuanshuo technical support team at support@yuanshuotech.com.