System Room Moving

Serdar Zeybek
January 27, 2012

Items which must be taken into consideration during system rooms moving are given below although these might chance based on project structure and complexity:

  • Budget
  • Facility & Capacity Planning
  • Inventory
  • Relations between application and systems
  • Project Management
  • Disaster Recovery/ Business Continuity
  • Timing

As it can be easily seen from above mentioned items, if data center moving operation is not planned properly, this might cause bad results.  Therefore, before commencing SRM projects (System Room Moving), pre-planning should be made. During pre-planning stage, professional consultancy is important.  There are mainly four different items for SRM:

  • Planning
  • Scaling
  • Complexity
  • Risks

If we go into detail;

Budget:

Similarly in every project, SRM projects must have a certain budget.  Budget size is proportional to project size and needs.

Facility and Capacity Planning:

New facility should have the similar capacity with the existing facility. Therefore, a due diligence should be done for the new facility and a planning report should be written accordingly.

Inventory:

It is mandatory to have all inventories of existing data center and related infrastructure.  This inventory list should include not only physical structures but also systems and applications running on the physical structures.  Some assistance tools can be used for keeping an inventory. By using softwares and tools to do this, time can be shortened and mistakes can be avoided.

Relations between application and systems:

Since our aim is establishing the similar infrastructure that we have its inventory into a new system room; only inventory can not be sufficient. Therefore, we need to know relations and interactions of applications and systems with each other (Application Mapping). Again, certain tools are needed to define such relations.

Project Management:

Moving should have an individual project management. There must be a project manager likewise in every other project. During project implementation phase, outsourcing must be done from the experienced professionals.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity:

The greatest guarantee factor in hand against data loss and business continuity failure which is the major risk in SRM project is disaster recovery and/or business continuity structure.  If we do not have such structure, actually adopting this structure can be an opportunity before moving operation.

Timing:

Actually it is one of the biggest problems that we have, when SRM project will be realized. As time gets close, inherently pressure on the project will increase.  SRM project manager should have the utmost care during applying this timing structure in the project.

  • What we should take care in the project plan
  • Assigning project owner
  • Appointing project manager
  • Defining important technical leaders
  • Contact list of IT suppliers
  • Communication Plan

Depending on budget, scope and SRM areas, there might be additional requests about below subjects from managers, end users and IT teams:

  • More server addition
  • More storage area
  • Update and replacement
  • Outsourcing
  • Getting rid of “idle” ones
  • Removing old software
  • New applications
  • Enlargement or improvement of network structure
  • Cost reduction by server consolidation (Virtualization)
  • Replacing old servers with new ones
  • Reducing number of licensed software and cost reduction
  • Cost reduction regarding with outsourcing