migrate

Years spent in the database industry tend to impart a keen sense of the difficulties involved in the common yet Herculean task of migrating large amounts of data between different databases using completely different file formats and structures, and a keen sense of sympathy for the database administrators who often work all night to make it happen. Help is available in the form of an affordable enterprise-level database migration tool, DTM Migration Kit from DTM Soft. It's a powerful, flexible and, at only 1.26MB, compact utility that can automatically import, export, and migrate data from ODBC, IDAPI, and … Read more

Periodically people may find that their user accounts have become corrupted, where system processes and applications will not function properly when running in that account. Depending on the severity of the corruption, troubleshooting and fixing the problems may sometimes be more effort than it's worth, with creating a fresh account being a quicker workaround, especially if upon testing a new one the odd behavior does not persist. In these instances, while sometimes a complete reinstallation of OS X is the most straightforward approach, migrating to a new account may be preferred if you need to ensure other user accounts and application installations do not get touched.… Read more

Correction: This article was updated at 11:10 PDT to remove the statement that AOL doesn't allow using non-AOL e-mail clients to access its e-mail, which is untrue.

It's been a challenge to persuade my friends to move on from AOL. It's not because I am not convincing enough (I am!), it's just that it's impossible for them to move their e-mail archive and contacts to a new non-AOL account.

But now my persuasion level has just been raised a notch as Gmail announced Wednesday a new feature that helps make the move easier.

Gmail … Read more

It's nice to read what open-source vendors think of open source: it's easy, cheap, and quite possibly the cure for cancer. (That last one is my personal hope.)

However, it's much more useful to get real customer feedback on open source. That's what makes Mercian Labels' shift to open source--with all the benefits and negatives that come with such a move--so intriguing. It's especially useful data, since the company meticulously tracked the highs and lows of its shift to open source on its blog, as its managing director, Adrian Steele, told me over e-mail.… Read more

Even as Red Hat, Canonical, Novell, and other Linux vendors seek to differentiate their respective offerings, Novell wants to make it easy to overcome differences between Linux distributions...provided that customers want to migrate to Novell's SUSE? Linux Enterprise Server (SLES).

On Tuesday Novell announced a new Linux migration program - the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Subscription with Expanded Support program - to make it easier to switch from Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS to SLES. From the press release:

Many times, customers who want to move between platforms are constrained by factors such as IT resource limitations, application migration scheduling and training costs, which means they need time to make an orderly transition. In response to these challenges, Novell is providing technical support for a customer's existing Linux environment and is also delivering training and tools to ensure the transition to the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform is smooth and successful.

Intriguingly, the program also includes technical support for customers' existing Linux deployments for up to two years while they migrate to SUSE. Did Novell just get into the Oracle Unbreakable Linux Red Hat knock-off game?

No. The short-term support is designed to be just that: short term. Unlike Oracle, Novell is interested in converting Red Hat users to SUSE, not keeping them as Red Hat users but changing the logo on the box to its own.

I asked Justin Steinman, vice president of Solution and Product Marketing at Novell, for clarification on how it will staff its Red Hat support, in particular, and he made it clear that such support has long been a part of its business:… Read more

Microsoft said on Monday that it now plans to offer its server virtualization product for free.

Ahead of a virtualization event in Redmond, Wash., Microsoft said that its Hyper-V Server 2008 will be released within 30 days and be available at no cost via the Web. The software maker had planned to charge $28 for the product.

Also on Monday, Microsoft plans to show off a live migration feature that will be part of the next version of its Hyper-V virtualization technology. Live migration allows companies to move a running virtual machine from one server to another.

The feature will … Read more

Thinking about switching e-mail providers but don't want to lose all the messages from your old in box? For $10 an account a service called Yippie Move will do all the heavy lifting for you. It works with about 40 various Web and educational e-mail providers, or with any account that supports IMAP. Just plug in the credentials from your old mail service with your new account and it will do the migration for you.

While advanced users could do all of this themselves simply by mass forwarding, Yippie Move is aimed at e-mail newbies and those who don'… Read more

In celebration of 25 years of PC hookups, Laplink is offering its PCmover migration utility--normally a $50 product--free of charge. All you have to do is head to Laplink's site and download the program, no strings attached.

PCmover is designed to help you transfer files, settings, and even programs from one machine to another. You can make the move using a network, removable media (like an external hard drive), or an optional USB cable. A wizard-driven interface promises to make the process relatively painless.

CNET hasn't reviewed this version of the program, but PC World covered it a few months back. … Read more