Whether you’re migrating your data center down the block or across the country, data center relocations can be a challenge. To make sure none of your worst relocation fears come true, consider these four potential pitfalls that can and do happen when relocating your data center.
You don’t understand the difficulty of the move.
A migration to a new data center is more difficult than you might imagine. You need to understand the function of a large number of factors, including physical and virtual servers, power and cooling loads, and the business context of your applications. The biggest problem companies face in a move like this one is underestimating its difficulty and under-preparing for a move.
You think your migration tools do all of the work.
Migration tools can help you make your move smoother, but they don’t do all the work. Specifically, they are designed with certain situations in mind, ones that might not be true for you. Also, once you have found the correct tool, you will need to invest in and configure the tool to create a pilot platform with your environment and purpose in mind. In other words, you have to put in the work before migration tools can pay off for you.
You haven’t fully considered all of your data center’s interdependencies.
If you haven’t considered all of the upstream and downstream interdependencies for the part of the infrastructure you’re moving, you won’t move all of the interdependent systems together. Then, if your infrastructure subsets aren’t properly matched, you’ll have unplanned downtime, which, of course, results in business losses.
Your storage plans are incomplete.
Most critical data is already backed up for disaster recovery or archiving or both. If you re-platform your storage environment in your relocation, a difficulty can arise when you replicate between two storage environments that are not the same. At the very least, you will likely need a third party tool, but no matter what you do, you’ll need to zone and mask very carefully, making sure that you’re paying attention to details.
If you don’t feel equipped to handle a relocation yourself – or you’re worried about the possible migration problems that could arise – you don’t have to go at it alone. Silverback Data Center Solutions keeps everything in mind, from professional de-installing to inventory validation at your new location, so you won’t encounter a single one of these issues during your relocation.
