There are generally a few factors at play when deciding on the timing of your data center move.
A critical capital investment into your existing data center or building is required that your team is uncertain of making.
Lifecycle of the existing infrastructure in conjunction with their support agreements
Current lease on your building or Colocation space
These are arguably the three most common items that businesses align their moves with, and rightfully so. Let's go through each of the 3 and outline some of the things your team can do to accelerate the move, especially when it would be more helpful to do so sooner rather than later.
Critical Capital Investment
A critical capital investment usually occurs when a business has an actual outage and realizes it needs to build in greater resiliency, redundancy, or refresh the current aging equipment that is beginning to or already has failed.
Tips:
Rental equipment and agreements. There are plenty of organizations that can provide rental generators, HVAC systems, and other critical items that your team may be experiencing an issue with. You can have an agreement in place to have a generator rolled to your location and hooked up within a designated SLA.
If capital outlay is an issue, rank critical applications and physically segment the hardware/infrastructure they reside on. At a minimum, provide backup power to these systems only so that your business can still operate.
Leasing options can help your team spread out the upfront investments that are required - contact sales@alucidsolutions.com to find out who you can work with for these types of leases.
Lifecycle of current IT and Facilities Infrastructure
Mature organizations will often have established refresh cycles for their IT infrastructure. Sometimes each stack (server, storage, network, end clients) is in complete alignment, and sometimes it is sporadic. Regardless of which your organization falls into, here are some great options.
Tips:
Short term rentals of equipment that has only recently been purchased. So that you do not need to purchase new equipment or complete an overnight hardware move, you can get short term rentals of switches, routers, servers, and storage arrays - "Swing Gear" - that will sit at the new location in preparation for your move.
ITAD buyback services. Work with a leading IT Asset Disposition organization that can purchase your existing infrastructure and properly sanitize it for resale. Experienced IT remarketers will provide valuations up front and immediately before a move so that upon your data center move completion you are able to get capital back from your current hardware. This can often be in return of credit towards your new purchase, data center moving services, or ongoing IT support.
3rd Party Maintenance. You can get a low-cost maintenance solution to help extend the life of equipment that you want to move instead of maintaining Manufacturer support. While many OEMs will permit a move of hardware, it is often costly for them to "certify", "Band", or move contracts.
Existing Lease
Organizations will try to align the timing of their data center move with a lease of their existing space, whether that be an office, on-premise dedicated data center, or their current colocation facility. Another common agreement under consideration is the internet and fiber contracts for the existing location.
Tips:
Ask the new location you are moving to reduce the cost or simply not charge you for the space until your ready to go live at the new facility. Perhaps your team would like to start staging out a new deployment, prep internet circuits (or transfer them), install hardware before power and configuring everything. If you are going to a colocation, they will often do that as long as you are not using utility yet.
Review your current agreement for typical contract costs - utilities, internet, etc. If they are metered, then feel free to move out as you will only need to be paying for the space.
Check with your current Internet and fiber provider to see if they are able to transfer your existing agreement to the new location that you are wanting to go into.
Work with your real estate broker to see if there are options to sublet your existing space or data center. They may have a client lined up ready to take over your current location.
Let me know if you have some other tips in mind for how you can work through these three common issues when working through a data center move. Leave a comment below and be sure to tag #alucidmovingservices
Written By: Mackenzie Perry