Data Center Moves – What to Consider

From financial institutions to staffing companies, it’s the summer of data center moves for EasyIT!   A number of our clients are taking advantage of low lease rates in Columbus and are upgrading their offices.    For those clients with internally hosted systems, a major part of the move is relocating their data center. Clients choose to move their data center for a variety of reasons, but relocation of their main office is a primary motivator.

Moving a production data center can be a huge task and can take between 2 -3   months to plan. Often small business will attempt to move their own data center which can result in chaos, downtime, significant cost, and ultimately loss of business. Be sure to pick a vendor that has experience in this area and has perfected the process for data center moves to insure minimum interruptions to your business.

Planning Phase:

Per the EasyIT approach, we start by planning with our partner/client to determine downtime tolerance and to gather information regarding the new facilities.  Priorities are set and the communication, wiring and electrical vendors are engaged.

It is important that your IT department or IT vendor work closely with your various vendors to plan and coordinate.  Don’t underestimate this task, it can take considerable time and is very important.  A poor vendor or mediocre vendor management can sink the best laid plans.  We also suggest that you take advantage of this opportunity to evaluate new vendors, such as new Internet service providers (ISP’s).

Detailed site planning should then be performed.  It should account for network and phone connectivity, power, cooling, physical security, rack placement and wire management.   Be sure to allow for future growth! You may want to invest in additional space in your new data centers along with improved cooling and power management.

Colocation is a strong option for many businesses when they need to move their data center. Adding a co-location facility as part of the data center move provides a location for your backup or production servers to reside.  This dramatically reduces the risk of future power or ISP interruptions for that equipment.  EasyIT strongly recommends that you select a carrier neutral datacenter, as this reduces your reliance on a single telecom vendor in the future.  We leverage datacenter.bz, a Tier 4 data center in Columbus, to provide per “Rack unit” (RU) colocation with redundant power, cooling and communications.

Preparation Phase:

The second step in the EasyIT approach involves documentation and planning.  We suggest taking a complete inventory of every single component being relocated. This inventory will include the following:

- Equipment models
- Serial numbers
- Configurations
- Replacement value
- Vendor contacts

Also during this step, create diagrams to show how each system is currently installed and how it will be installed in the new data center and rack.  Wiring and ports in the computer rack should be painstakingly labeled and documented.

Before beginning the actual move, build contingency plans for most foreseeable move-related system failures.  An important possibility to consider is equipment failing during the move.  Servers, routers, switches and other equipment with moving internal parts pose the greatest risk of failure.  Their risk of failure increases significantly the longer they have been running in production.  In general, at risk equipment is anything that has been in production for more than 2 years.  To mitigate equipment failure risks, extra backups, including image based backups, should be made prior to the move and contingency plans are put in place for different failure scenarios.

Move Phase:

On move day, have your vendor take responsibility for moving all data center racks and equipment. At the pre-determined time, perform a system shutdown and immediately do whatever communication cut-overs are necessary as that can be one of the lengthier parts of the move. The equipment should then be immediately torn down, loaded and delivered to the new data center. Depending on the distance of the relocation, a reasonable expectation to have the new data center “up” and fully tested should be about 12 hours for a small business.

With proper move and contingency planning, you should experience minimized downtime and greatly reduced overall risk.  Issues often come up but can be handled quickly by a prepared move team.

EasyIT offers great peace of mind by providing an expert team of technicians to move your data center.  Please contact our staff to learn more.