Data Center Tips 2

While considering a relocation to data center, one must stop a while to ponder on certain questions which would prove beneficial to the whole relocation process. Do you know your budget? Has the destination been fixed? Have you decided the move date? Is a move plan in place? Have duties been allocated? Have you weighed up the impact of downtime to your business? Is there a risk or a contingency plan in place? Data center relocation is never an easy task. It may eat up into regular business or may weigh one down immensely with its seemingly intimidating complications. It is thus important to plan a move way in advance, and if necessary seek the help of professionals and relocation consultants to make the move easier.

Sometimes, breaking down the move in various phases would ensure a smooth relocation and also cut down on unnecessary expenditure. It might also reduce the downtime of setting up the center at the new location as well as ensure service availability for a longer period of time. First up it is thus important to select the new site. Site selections are typically constrained by economy, scalability, feasibility etc. Thus define the organization’s constraints first. These constraints would form the basic criteria for a site selection and would make the process faster too.

Make sure all pre-move activities are completed before the actual relocation. Certain pre-move activities include: completing an origin site inventory of all the equipments, their warranties and support contracts, completing an inter connection network of original network center and data center, labeling documents and equipments for teardown and reassembly, complete risk and contingency plan documents, check the equipments for need of spare parts or even to check if newer equipments need to be ordered, communicate the move plan within the organization and allocate responsibilities.

The next step would be disassembly. One should never hurry through the process of disassembly as that might result in critical data losses. Communicate and log disassembly status at regular intervals to keep a tab on the progress. For the transit, it is best to hire vendors as some critical systems would need special packaging and care for the transit. After arrival, never attempt to put everything back together. Taking time and starting from scratch is the best option here. At the reassembly stage, use the same resources that had been used for the disassembly stage. It might take time but that would be worth it.