Patent ID: 8793448

Claim:
A computing environment, comprising: a computing node coupled to a first storage system and a second storage system, wherein the computing node includes a multi-pathing module that permits the computing node to communicate data operations to the first storage system and the second storage system via a primary communication path and a secondary communication path, wherein the primary communication path extends between the first storage system and the multi-pathing module and wherein the secondary communication paths extends between the second storage system and the multi-pathing module; a migration communication path between the first storage system and the second storage system, wherein the migration communication path extends between the first storage system and the second storage system and is utilized to transparently perform data migration between the first storage system and the second storage system non-disruptively to the computing node, wherein the data is migrated from first storage devices coupled to the first storage system and stored in second storage devices coupled to the second storage system; and at least one module executed to perform the data migration by: discovering first logical storage structures of the first storage system including storage system characteristics; creating an image mode volume on the second storage system including image mode logical storage structures, including virtual disks, that match the discovered first logical storage structures, wherein the image mode volume is a proxy for the first logical storage structures of the first storage system; notifying the multi-pathing module to redirect the transmission of realtime data for storage on the second storage system instead of the first storage system; wherein the multi-pathing module passes data read operations to the image mode volume for read data not yet migrated to the second storage system, wherein the data read operations are fulfilled by the image mode volume from the first storage system without the computing node being aware of where the data resides between the first storage system and the second storage system, wherein the image mode volume stores read data from the first storage system on the second storage devices to complete migration of the read data; and initiating the data migration of stored data on the first storage system to the second storage devices of the second storage system, wherein the first storage system provides a notification when the migration completes in order to permit the computing node to access the second storage system as a primary storage system.