Server Room Relocation

dise83

I run the IT department for a smallish business with 80 employees and have the wonderful task or relocating our server room as part of an office move. We have been planning this for a few weeks now, but have found it extremely hard to find any information available on the Internet to help in the matter. There are very few of us in the IT department and so would appreciate any tips or help from anyone that may have had to do the same or something similar in the past.

We have the basics sorted but i'm sure we've all overlooked a few bits and pieces!

Thanks for any help!

Chris

ntlbell

dise83 wrote:

I run the IT department for a smallish business with 80 employees and have the wonderful task or relocating our server room as part of an office move. We have been planning this for a few weeks now, but have found it extremely hard to find any information available on the Internet to help in the matter. There are very few of us in the IT department and so would appreciate any tips or help from anyone that may have had to do the same or something similar in the past.

We have the basics sorted but i'm sure we've all overlooked a few bits and pieces!

Thanks for any help!

Chris

Maybe if you asked some specific questions?

dise83

Has anyone done a move like this before and do they have any tips at all? I've just graduated from Uni and have very little experience in anything along these lines!
After scouring the Internet all I could find was lot of generalities, such as “plan, plan, plan” and “make contingency plans because things will not go as planned” and “communications will be the most critical and difficult aspect of the move.” Obviously, most of these “tips” are self-evident and not very helpful.

I have the telephony systems all sorted and pretty much up and running, so its all about moving the servers.

Any tips or help at all, in any area would be appreciated!

Stephen

Give your users advance notice of the downtime during the server move, and plan a maintenance window much larger than you think you'll need, in case anything goes wrong. Have the network infrastructure in place in the new computer room before you move any of the servers into it to minimise downtime.

Are WAN links involved? Does the place have structured cabling in place? If not, its a worthwhile investment, and doing it before everything's installed would be preferable to doing it afterwards.

CiaranC

Start at 6pm on Friday evening.

ntlbell

What cooling was been used in the old room? was there raised floors?

is there raised floors in this room?

Where you using perforated tiles?

Have you worked out where the cabs will be placed in relation to the aircon?

What types of doors are on the cabs? glass/meshed if glass get meshed.

use this opportunity to sort it out.

What sort of cabling?

Take this chance to move to cat5e if possible etc etc

as mentioned give yourself LOADS of time

What's on the servers?

do you have WAN links to other offices?


yada yada

steve-hosting36

You could always shift the entire room to a an outsourced datacentre and not have to worry about any of the above!

ntlbell

You could also buy an umbrella so you don't get wet!

I know you never asked about umbrella's but I thought I might aswell pimp my umbrella shop.

bishopLEN

Hi,

Split/relocated a Server room last year. Was not good..... SCSI card would not come up afer the File server was shut down.
Lucky we had a HP 6hr support contract.
There almost definately will be a problem that was unforseable but I hope things go well !

Get phone numbers together for suppliers that can source and deliver scarce components like SCSI cards etc. that could just 'calf'.

Have a few spare pcs around, if you can, to setup temp services if things go pear shaped.

Use your support contracts (if you have any) for your servers.

jamesd

1) Make sure all work in the new server room is completed before you move any of your IT gear in there
2) Pack all carefully - extra care with servers
3)Transport backup tapes in a different van/lorry then the servers to the new site
Advise: Do backups and make sure their successful and plan a disaster recovery plan as a precaution.

zAbbo

How much live kit are you moving, are the cabs/patch panels/switches in place ?

Expect the unexpected, be anal about moving the servers, pack them very securely.

DublinWriter

dise83 wrote:

Has anyone done a move like this before and do they have any tips at all? I've just graduated from Uni and have very little experience in anything along these lines!

Dude, firstly, I'm not busting your case, but you stated that the run the IT function in this business.

Have you ever done any business Risk Assessment exercises in college, or were you just coding in Java? Do you know the classic three 'C's of I.T. risk analysis?

I'll summarise - the key one here is continuity. You need to plan for what might go wrong and formulate a plan B.

ntlbell

DublinWriter wrote:

I'll summarise - the key one here is continuity. You need to plan for what might go wrong and formulate a plan B.

That was some summary, College really is an amazing thing.

Sleipnir

Like some general said before the Normandy landings
"A plan is absolutely essential but will be useless as soon as the operation begins" (or something similiar anyway!)

I have a major switch upgrade due on the May bank holiday weekend which involves the upgrade of the bank's entire network backbone. The one every server and workstation run on so my planning began months ago. We have about 70 servers and 200 workstations. The upgrade means unplugging absolutely everything, replacing the switches (and a config change of how they work) and then plugging everything in again. I haven't decided whether or not to switch over entirely from the PABX to the VOIP system at the same time. I should, but I don't think I have time to do the work required beforehand.

We also desperately need another repatch but there are about 2000 cables so I may just do the servers beforehand.

Fun, fun, fun.

weeder

haha do a datacenter lmao just dont do it to any shop pimpers eh not really like steve he has 100MBPs to there servers 24/7 im guessing with you they might only have10MBPS to your datacenter

ntlbell

weeder wrote:

haha do a datacenter lmao just dont do it to any shop pimpers eh not really like steve he has 100MBPs to there servers 24/7 im guessing with you they might only have10MBPS to your datacenter

huh???

steve-hosting36

huh???

DublinWriter

weeder wrote:

haha do a datacenter lmao just dont do it to any shop pimpers eh not really like steve he has 100MBPs to there servers 24/7 im guessing with you they might only have10MBPS to your datacenter

...and once again, this time in English?

Random

weeder wrote:

haha do a datacenter lmao just dont do it to any shop pimpers eh not really like steve he has 100MBPs to there servers 24/7 im guessing with you they might only have10MBPS to your datacenter

can i just jump in here and say "w-t-f-?" too ?

Capt'n Midnight

weeder wrote:

haha do a datacenter lmao just dont do it to any shop pimpers eh not really like steve he has 100MBPs to there servers 24/7 im guessing with you they might only have10MBPS to your datacenter

10MBPS = 80 mega bits per second

Kali

Order of plan I'd use:

Power... check, check and double-check. All circuits should be capable of taking required loads... if not contact an electrician, get them to look at your existing kit and create compatible circuits in the new location.

Office Cabling... before any clients are sitting at their desks, make sure all cables and patch points work... and label ones that don't. save yourself climbing under desks now.

Air-con... make sure its reliable, on a different circuit than the servers and is capable of cooling the target room.

Communications (Phone/Net)... make sure they're ready for use before any clients move... if not make contingency plans (temp. ADSL on existing analog lines).

Once all four of those are in place then worry about the physical relocation of your gear...

If you only have 80 employees I doubt theres a huge amount of racks, so I don't think a raised-floor type scenario is necessary (unless your on the ground floor.. then consider it, flooding is not good).

Static M.e.

Im sure have all ready thought of this but make sure you document everything before and during the move. What you moved, how you moved it, which cable went into which port / switch / router etc.

Might also be a good time to really organise the cabling in your new server room. Colour code it for Voip cables, Server cables, patch cables etc not neccessary at all really but Ive seem a large room where it was implemented and it made trouble shooting things so much easier. Its the perfect oportunity aswell.

best of luck with the move. Let us know how you get on.