For any and every organization, data center migration can be a bit tricky. But that's especially true for the do-it-yourselfers at small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs); they often don't have the resources to involve high-priced specialists. Instead they need to do the best with the resources they have.
The common challenge in all of the moves/ migration is unknown. "That's why it is so important to plan, plan, plan and then plan some more". In one of the "worst case," one of my friend Manu said the bankruptcy of a co-location facility forced an unplanned shift of one of his data centers within a matter of days (3 weeks). Thanks to good luck, he and his organization has immediately identified an alternate location, the move succeeded. However, he noted, "It took three months before things were really back to normal." Data Center migrations have been the result of more leisurely and thorough planning as well as the ability to prepare a whole new facility and then simply move the resources, to minimize the impact and reduce the possibility of outages.
As Manu suggested that first step should always has be to be clear your mind about your bandwidth needs and then talk to your ISP / network suppliers. "Moving network devices might take as little as a few weeks, but for higher capacity systems you might need three or four months of lead time," he said.
By the way, any one knows how a specialist work on the DC migration project. Ok, no guess needed, I have prepared a Data center migration checklist which will help you to become a specialist in DC migration project. The list includes the following steps....
a. Review support contracts to make sure they will still be valid in the new location, after H/W migration
b. Determine who will do the physical shifting and reconfiguration: your own staff, a consultant. Collect & classify every bit of detail
c. Review service-level agreements (SLA) with outside customers (if any), particularly with regard to liability for any customer supplied or customer owned equipment
d. Document and label everything. If possible, consider simplifying your infrastructure well in advance of a move
e. Document every application/system interdependencies and plan the sequence of the move accordingly
f. If possible, set up a duplicate facility in the new location rather than moving and setting up the same equipment again
g. Be aware of and try to eliminate any single points of failure in both old and new locations
h. Develop and use redundancy. For example, a disaster recovery (DR) location where you can keep critical apps and provide failover
i. Consider moving to storage or server virtualization -- or both. one could set up a virtual platform including storage, virtualize the physical servers and move the virtual platform to the new location while keeping the physical setup at the old location until the virtual platform is up at the new location
j. Back up everything in preparation for the move. Hard drives are notorious for failing when they have been shut down, cooled, moved and restarted
k. You need to identify your most critical applications and have contingency plans in place, its just like preparing a disaster recovery and business continuity (BC) plan
As per my understanding, the planning process should be divided into two phases. The first phase is to determine what is wanted from the new data center or ensuring that a chosen location can meet certain requirements (i.e., space, power, security, other facilities, growth capacity and location). The second phase is to execute the move.
5 years ago I moved our two-racks worth of kit between floors in the same data center at VSNL Mumbai and it was too hard to get all the communications suppliers / colo server owners to turn up on the same Saturday to move everything at once.
Of course, migration aren't smooth, which begs the question of whether to do it yourself or hire someone else. As per my understanding, it depends on many factors. If you hire an outside consultant, be sure they have experience in this type of work and be sure you know how equipment will be transported and by whom.
For his part, Manu said hiring outside help may be a must if you have a small staff. However, he said, at a minimum, "You should make sure preparing for the move and coordinating it is the full-time responsibility of at least one person." Otherwise, you are looking at trouble. "Moving is a challenge but if you properly plan and prepare, it's manageable," he added.
For those embarking on a data center move, there are a few tools that may help. For example, data migration can be assisted by product such as....
a. Brocade's Data Migration Manager (DMM)
b. EMC Corp.'s Rainfinity (a NAS virtualization appliance that can be deployed for migrating data)
c. Hitachi Data Systems (Universal Replicator and open-source rsync). In addition
d. Shunra Software's Shunra VE, a tool that helps predict the impact of moving or reconfiguring a data center on application performance, backups and other aspects of operations.
That's all from me, all the very best for your endeavor to migrate Data Center
The common challenge in all of the moves/ migration is unknown. "That's why it is so important to plan, plan, plan and then plan some more". In one of the "worst case," one of my friend Manu said the bankruptcy of a co-location facility forced an unplanned shift of one of his data centers within a matter of days (3 weeks). Thanks to good luck, he and his organization has immediately identified an alternate location, the move succeeded. However, he noted, "It took three months before things were really back to normal." Data Center migrations have been the result of more leisurely and thorough planning as well as the ability to prepare a whole new facility and then simply move the resources, to minimize the impact and reduce the possibility of outages.
As Manu suggested that first step should always has be to be clear your mind about your bandwidth needs and then talk to your ISP / network suppliers. "Moving network devices might take as little as a few weeks, but for higher capacity systems you might need three or four months of lead time," he said.
By the way, any one knows how a specialist work on the DC migration project. Ok, no guess needed, I have prepared a Data center migration checklist which will help you to become a specialist in DC migration project. The list includes the following steps....
a. Review support contracts to make sure they will still be valid in the new location, after H/W migration
b. Determine who will do the physical shifting and reconfiguration: your own staff, a consultant. Collect & classify every bit of detail
c. Review service-level agreements (SLA) with outside customers (if any), particularly with regard to liability for any customer supplied or customer owned equipment
d. Document and label everything. If possible, consider simplifying your infrastructure well in advance of a move
e. Document every application/system interdependencies and plan the sequence of the move accordingly
f. If possible, set up a duplicate facility in the new location rather than moving and setting up the same equipment again
g. Be aware of and try to eliminate any single points of failure in both old and new locations
h. Develop and use redundancy. For example, a disaster recovery (DR) location where you can keep critical apps and provide failover
i. Consider moving to storage or server virtualization -- or both. one could set up a virtual platform including storage, virtualize the physical servers and move the virtual platform to the new location while keeping the physical setup at the old location until the virtual platform is up at the new location
j. Back up everything in preparation for the move. Hard drives are notorious for failing when they have been shut down, cooled, moved and restarted
k. You need to identify your most critical applications and have contingency plans in place, its just like preparing a disaster recovery and business continuity (BC) plan
As per my understanding, the planning process should be divided into two phases. The first phase is to determine what is wanted from the new data center or ensuring that a chosen location can meet certain requirements (i.e., space, power, security, other facilities, growth capacity and location). The second phase is to execute the move.
5 years ago I moved our two-racks worth of kit between floors in the same data center at VSNL Mumbai and it was too hard to get all the communications suppliers / colo server owners to turn up on the same Saturday to move everything at once.
Of course, migration aren't smooth, which begs the question of whether to do it yourself or hire someone else. As per my understanding, it depends on many factors. If you hire an outside consultant, be sure they have experience in this type of work and be sure you know how equipment will be transported and by whom.
For his part, Manu said hiring outside help may be a must if you have a small staff. However, he said, at a minimum, "You should make sure preparing for the move and coordinating it is the full-time responsibility of at least one person." Otherwise, you are looking at trouble. "Moving is a challenge but if you properly plan and prepare, it's manageable," he added.
For those embarking on a data center move, there are a few tools that may help. For example, data migration can be assisted by product such as....
a. Brocade's Data Migration Manager (DMM)
b. EMC Corp.'s Rainfinity (a NAS virtualization appliance that can be deployed for migrating data)
c. Hitachi Data Systems (Universal Replicator and open-source rsync). In addition
d. Shunra Software's Shunra VE, a tool that helps predict the impact of moving or reconfiguring a data center on application performance, backups and other aspects of operations.
That's all from me, all the very best for your endeavor to migrate Data Center
