Secrets to a successful data center or server room relocation

Secrets to a successful data center or server room relocation

One of the most difficult challenges a data center or server room manager has is hardware relocation.  Depending on the size of the staff, even the smallest of hardware relocations have roadblocks.

The great thing about our technology today, is often times a hardware relocation can be avoided with migration.  This is not always the case, and you may have to get in there, roll up the sleeves and perform heavy lifting.

The reality is that your physical hardware has physical and logical dependencies to account for.  There is also a risk that when you move and relocate the devices it wont come back on line.  Of course the more hardware that is involved with your data center move, the more complex it will become.

The good news is that there are steps that can be taken to streamline a data center or server room move by mitigating the most common risks, reducing down time, all while making the move successful.

Prioritize your hardware

The single most important thing to a data center move actually happens weeks before the move itself.  The most critical component is having a plan.  Assemble a list of the peripheral equipment and machines that you intend to relocate, and make notes of redundant hardware.  Remember if you can stagger when they are offline, you can avoid an interruption of service to clients. 

Consider which machines are most critical for you business, and establish which equipment will need to be offline for the least amount of time.  Ranking order in your equipment will enable you to determine which order to power down and restart hardware.  The goal is last off, first to come back on! 

Plan the Hardware Deployment

Think about how you want you servers, storage devices, and network equipment arranged at the destination.  Consider rack, and space requirements prior to the actual setup.  This also includes having the proper hardware to secure these devices within their environment.  Often times the original cage nuts or screws are not able to be reused.  Also verify that all shelving and rails are able to be reused in the new racks.

While there can be advantages in moving full racks of servers, there are also great reasons to re-rack as well.  If you have redundant servers in the same cabinet, this would be a great time to separate them.  If you are populating a brand new data center or server room think about your overall strategy of allocating hardware and floor space.  Do you want to put hardware by type or function?  Maybe you want to mix the gear so the most power hungry systems aren’t clustered together, and requiring great powering and cooling density in a given cabinet. 

Create a move time line

Estimate how long the data center move will take.  Sketch down a timeline for powering down equipment, cable management, un-racking, packaging, clean up, loading the moving trucks at the origin, and travel time; the same is applied at the destination.  You will also want to add in trouble shooting time for any given instances such as component failures.  Be generous with your time estimates.  It is much better to estimate job completion being a total of 28 hours, but then actually completing in 18 hours.

Opt to select a moving or transportation company

Look and research movers that have experience in the packing, handling, and transportation of highly sensitive equipment (and data).  Ideally look for a mover that specializes in the data center moving industry, or has a track record of working in the industry.  Be sure to document what elements in the data center relocation that the transportation company will be responsible for, or what roll they will play.  For example, will the movers package and secure the equipment held within your cabinets, or will you?  If there is damage to the equipment, will the moving company pay for the damages?  Does the server moving company have the correct insurances that will cover the entire process of your data center relocation? 

Instruct the movers

Work with the moving company representatives and create written instructions for the movers to follow when at your facility.  These instructions should also include operational standards you normally have in your data centers, and move specific instructions.  Do the movers need to check in, or wear identification badges while onsite?  Do the movers have access to the entire building, or data center?  Are certain areas going to be off limits?  Do you prefer the data center movers to use a loading dock, or street entrance?

Schedule the move

You want to establish a move time that is the least disruptive to your business.  If your company employs maintenance windows in which down time is acceptable or freeze periods when it is not, plan accordingly.  Plan the actual move avoiding heavy traffic times, sporting events, or severe weather for example. 

Establish a back out-plan

If there an infrastructure problem for example, you want to be able to gracefully halt some or all of the relocation activities.  Once you have completed all of these steps, you are almost ready for moving day. 

Label hardware and cabinets

Prior to the move label all of your hardware, cabinets, and floor tiles at the destination.  Post a diagram on each cabinet listing which tile location it will be transported to.  If you are re-racking hardware include a simple line sketch documenting the position in which it be relocated to in the new cabinet from top to bottom.  Color coding is also a great option for the prior mentioned, and makes it very obvious.  For example use blue labels specifically for one cabinet, and label all of the equipment with blue labels that will be assigned to this space.  Diagrams complimented with a color coding system makes for an easier transition.

Pre-cable patch cords

For any fully populated rack moves, you can transport them with any connected patch cords carefully coiled up inside.  For equipment that will need to be re-racked, pre-patched cabling at the destination floor tiles; because you will know how the equipment will be arranged you will be able to calculate how many cables and lengths at each tile. 

Obtain equipment spares

Set aside a set of components that might become non-operational during the relocation process.  You don’t want to extend the relocation because you do not have a spare power supply for example.  Cage screws & nuts, patch cords, connections, and even server cabinets are good to have extra’s of as well.

Protect the data center

Transporting a lot of staff, and equipment across the data center creates a lot of wear and tear on the room.  It may be a good idea to put down tacky mats at the entrances, and exits of the floors in the room.  Protection along the route of travel on floors to protect tiles could also be a good option. 

Executing the move

With all of your prep work done, it’s time to carry out the move.  Bring all hands on deck!  The goal of any relocation is to have it performed quickly and carefully so the down time is minimal, and there is no damage to any of the buildings (data centers).  Remember the more experienced people involved with any data center relocation, the shorter down time!

Supervise the move

It is still important at all times to supervise the people and equipment to verify that the process and handling is appropriate at all times.  This includes even following server cabinets to verify that they are being moved slowly, and lifted slightly at lips of doorways.  Movers should remove all protective wrapping before entering the destination data center.  This will reduce dirt and foreign contaminants from entering the room. 

After the move

Once the computer equipment has been moved to their new location, be sure to remove all old and dated labeling.  Be sure to keep the new labeling in place. 

Restart the equipment

Begin to power your equipment according to the sequence mapped out before the move.  Be sure to bring systems online gradually, especially those that are sharing electrical circuits.  It can be tempting to turn on multiple servers at once, but doing so in a staggered manner reduces the chances of overloading an electrical circuit and tripping a breaker. 

Update your hardware database

Finally, when the devices have been moved be sure to update their server location in whatever data bases you use to track their location!

Data Center Relocation Tips

Any kind of move or relocation has proven to cause significant anxiety and stress to anyone involved.  The kind of relocation that is most critical, however, is the one involving server relocation of data centers, because any misstep by you or by the computer moving service can mean data losses and critical business disruptions that can hurt a company’s reputation. Although a complex process, relocation of a data center need not be overwhelming.  Invest on months of careful planning, selection of the right IT moving company, and assigning the most reliable relocation teams to be able to attain the optimal solution to meet the demands of a complicated relocation task is the way to go about it.

Pre-Planning

Establish your operation objectives, so you will have a reference point when you present your plans to all the people who will be involved in it.  Hiring a consultant from a reputable IT moving company or a computer moving service as your guide during the planning stage can be beneficial too.

Planning Process

Communication is very important among everyone that is involved.  Everyone involved should understand what the entire plan is, from start to finish.  In this stage, the day of the move will be discussed, as well as how the hardware will be transported and which data center movers to hire for the server moving.  It is imperative to organize task and plans, and test it in order to anticipate and address every challenge that may arise.

Create A Back-Up Of Your Inventories

Label all your software, applications and hardware with a relocation data base number as you get ready for the server relocation.  Make sure that the relocation inventory is always up to date by applying a change tracking process.  It is better to be safe than sorry, so make sure to create three sources as your back-up for all of your company’s data and applications as you resort to the most feasible computer movers.

Networking Plans

Building a new data center that can parallel the performance and quality of your old one can be planned well in advance, thanks to bandwidth costs becoming more inexpensive nowadays.  Take the opportunity to do a network design and move equipment and applications without creating a disruption.  It is also wise to test your network on virtual models before the IT moving company or data center movers come to work to avert from any unfortunate surprises. 

Assign A Consultant To Oversee The Server Movers

Hiring a data center relocation expert to oversee and guide the work of the computer moving service or data center movers you hired is significant to a smooth-sailing relocation process.

By adhering and taking into action all these important tips, your company are sure to have an efficiently streamlined data center migration procedure with minimized migration-related downtime.  It is imperative to stay coordinated in order to avoid budget overruns and serious business disruptions and just focus on achieving a successful relocation process.  

                                

Similarly, you will need to consult the most professional and reliable Cloud Movers with a proven track record of best Cloud Equipment Relocation and Cloud Equipment Consolidation.

Data Center Relocation Projects Are Not Created Equal

Gartner Group studied more than 70% of the Global 1000 organizations and found they will have to either move or modify their data center facilities significantly during the next five years.  The term data center is such a broad word to use.  A company’s data center can vary in size and complexity, ranging from a small room to a 40,000 square foot dedicated building.

For many smaller companies, basements and back rooms often serve as data center space in the place of dedicated facilities.  This often times leads to inefficiencies, reliability issues and potential security risks.  Increasingly the consensus in the IT world is that it makes sense for small and midsize businesses to move to an outsourced data center model, which allows a company to achieve the performance of an enterprise-grade facility rather than continuing to operate in sub optimal conditions.

For many smaller companies, running a data center facility does not make financial sense, due to their server footprint being too small to justify a dedicated building. But their reliability needs may be the same as a large enterprise, so they choose a better environment other than their current.

All companies’ dynamics change, and with this there is becomes a realization that they may need extra help, and this requirement may be by having an outside resource fill that missing link. That’s not just in supplemental staff, but it may also be the need for space because your business is booming.  Then relocating your data center may be the best option for you.

Data centers can be wonderful, offering peace of mind when a company needs a stable environment to house their computer systems so that they may run constantly with protection, upkeep, backup power, communications connections, environmental controls and security devices.  If your company wants to put everything in one place, a data center can be a great solution. 

All too often clients don’t think of the potential problems that could arise by leaving a data center in the years to come.  A successful data center move is no accident, and headache filled relocation's can be reduced by proper insight and planning.  Data center moves can be one of the most risky if the whole project is not properly managed.  What if a rack of production servers fails to come back online after being moved due to improper handling?

This and many other items will be touched upon in our next article Data Center Relocation- Not All Relocation's Are Not Created Equal.  NCWS will offer steps you can take to streamline your data center relocation and offer insight.