Many businesses see value in migrating their technology to a third-party data center. Advantages can include financial savings, better performance, the ability to partner with other companies, expanding global reach, better customer satisfaction, and faster disaster recovery.
Data migration requires a great deal of planning, so the IT department of the company contracting with the data center needs to examine a range of issues before actually enacting the migration.
Key Considerations
When developing their data migration plans, companies should:
- Understand why the company is migrating, whether to expand markets, manage technology, save money, plan for disaster, or support a business merger.
- Plan for the future. Companies should anticipate whether they might want to expand their operations even further at a later time.
- Create a concise, step-by-step plan that identifies stages, timelines, allowable downtime, and notice requirements, so every team knows what happens and when.
- Review all current legal agreements before the move, so you know it is permissible and what legal issues might exist.
- Identify which outside vendors you need to involve in the move, such as network carriers and equipment movers.
- Review the migration with all the appropriate departments:
- Management will care about costs.
- IT staff need to understand all the server, storage, and software dependencies.
- Business divisions need to know when they might not be able to operate.
- Customers need notice of any delays so they can plan around them.
Reasons Data Center Migrations Go Wrong
A data center migration can fail for many reasons, including:
- An inexperienced IT department. If the company IT department does not have enough experience with data migration, an outside consultant may be the better choice. The team must understand the data center’s terminology and capacity. It also needs to know which parts of its information systems depend on other parts.
- IT departments that don’t work with each other. Large companies may have several locations or different floors within the same building, so there are often multiple IT departments within one company. Each IT department needs to understand what the other departments are doing. If they do not, many practical, technical, business, and legal problems can ensue.
- Failing to understand who is responsible. The company has to decide which IT operations it will own and which ones the data center will handle. Unless that is clear, nobody knows who to call when something breaks.
Useful strategies
The IT department will need several strategies while the migration is underway, including:
- Take a full inventory of current servers, hardware, and software. Then plan for dependency issues, because one missing piece can stall the move.
- Understand any limits the data center has, such as whether it can supply enough power, cooling, storage, and computing capacity.
- Have a contingency plan ready, because the best data migration plans anticipate problems in advance and spell out how to handle them. A good plan identifies the crucial systems that must stay online, as well as backups for those systems.
- Experienced data centers have professionals who know the key migration issues and how to prepare for them, so ask plenty of questions during the planning stage.
- Develop a testing plan to confirm the migration works before going live. The plan should verify that servers, electrical systems, and networks are all working. Also test small amounts of data for accuracy.
- Decide ahead of time what to do with the old equipment, so removal complies with health, safety, and environmental standards.
- Update all business documentation after the move, so it matches the new data center operations.
Speak with a Volico professional who can guide you through the data migration process
It’s easy to say companies that are migrating information systems to a data center should have a plan, but it’s hard to know what that plan should entail. The best data migration plans draw on years of experience. Experienced data center management professionals can help you draft the right plan for your business and technology needs. To discuss data center migration, call Volico at (305) 735-8098. Our professional staff is ready to help you through this complex transition.
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