Transitioning from Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) to MinIO has never been easier, thanks to our HCP-to-MinIO tool. Developed to support our customers' evolving storage needs, this tool is freely available on GitHub and greatly simplifies the migration process. Many organizations are transitioning to leverage MinIO's modern, scalable, and high-performance object storage optimized for AI infrastructure. This tutorial provides a comprehensive step-by-step guide to ensure a smooth and efficient transition to MinIO.

Why Transition to MinIO?

Customers often migrate from HCP to MinIO for several compelling reasons, particularly when optimizing for AI-driven applications:

1. Modern Application Requirements: MinIO is Kubernetes-native and built for the cloud operating model, which means that it inherently supports most modern application stacks for analytics, statistical analysis and AI/ML workloads.

2. Performance at Scale: MinIO efficiently handles mixed object sizes, from very small to very large, ensuring optimal performance for data-intensive AI operations.

3. Flexibility: Software-defined, S3-compatible object storage offers greater flexibility and cloud neutrality compared to dedicated storage appliances.

HCP-to-MinIO Migration Process

During migration, it's recommended to write exclusively to MinIO and not to HCP. This approach ensures you start as you plan to go on: using MinIO as your primary object store. Here’s the process:

1. Initial Read Operations: While migrating, `getobject` calls are directed to MinIO. If an object isn't found, it's read from HCP. Once all objects are copied, this fallback can be removed.

2. Preserving Metadata: The tool retains the modified timestamps of objects during the migration.

Step 1: Create a Temporary Directory

After downloading the HCP-to-MinIO tool the first step is to create a temporary directory for the results of the list command in Step 2:

$ mkdir /tmp/data

Next, set the following environment variables:

$ export MINIO_ACCESS_KEY=<Your-MinIO-Access-Key>
$ export MINIO_SECRET_KEY=<Your-MinIO-Secret-Key>
$ export MINIO_ENDPOINT=https://<Your-MinIO-IP-Address>:9000
$ export MINIO_BUCKET=newbucket  # optional, if unspecified HCP bucket name is used

Step 2: List Objects in HCP

The list command generates a list of objects stored in HCP and saves it to a local file. This file can be split into smaller lists and processed in parallel by multiple client machines to speed up the migration.

Here is the command:

hcp-to-minio list --auth-token --namespace-url --host-header --namespace-url --dir

And an example of what it might look like: 

$ hcp-to-minio list --auth-token "HCP bXl1c2Vy:3f3c6784e97531774380db177774ac8d" --host-header "HOST:s3testbucket.tenant.hcp.example.com" --namespace-url "https://hcp-vip.example.com" --dir "/tmp/data"

Step 3: Migrate Objects to MinIO

The migrate command uses the list generated in the first step to transfer objects from HCP to MinIO.

The command:

hcp-to-minio migrate --namespace-url --auth-token --host-header --data-dir --bucket --input-file

The example: 

$ hcp-to-minio migrate --namespace-url https://finance.europe.hcp.example.com --auth-token "HCP bXl1c2Vy:3f3c6784e97531774380db177774ac8d" --host-header "s3testbucket.sandbox.hcp.example.com" --data-dir /mnt/data --bucket s3testbucket --input-file /tmp/data/to-migrate.txt

Get Started

The HCP-to-MinIO tool is designed to help you move to a modern, scalable object storage solution. Download the tool from GitHub and start your migration today. For any questions or additional support, contact us at hello@min.io.