Guide to DC Migration

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Data Center Knowledge Guide to

Data Center Migration

by Julius NeudorferOctober 2013

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Executive SummaryData Center Migration, three words that can cause sleepless nights to even the most experienced professionals involved in enterprise IT and facilities departments. While it can be a daunt-ing challenge, it also offers a great opportunity to improve and rethink your IT architecture and examine how well it meshes with your organizations long term business strategies.

Before you can begin to analyze or make any meaningful deci-sions as to what or where you want to migrate your organiza-tions IT systems and data centers to, you need to first step back and understand what your immediate and long terms goals are for your organization and how it would be best served by your organizations computing architecture. CIOs and CTOs need to keep an open mind and examine existing systems closely as to how well they meet your organizations business strategies. Conversely, major decisions made by senior management CEOs and CFOs who are typically segregated from the details of the data center and IT departments could result in a less than opti-mal long term IT strategy.

There is an emerging trend which is growing rapidly toward out-sourcing the data center as many organizations re-evaluate the cost and need to build, own and operate their own data centers. Many organizations are either outsourcing the data center and IT functions (in whole or in part), in an effort to reduce costs and concentrate their resources on their core business. The result, the need to migrate IT systems and hardware to another data center or host applications with service providers or a combina-tion of both.

This whitepaper examines some of the major strategic issues that should be an integral part of your evaluation when forming a data center migration strategy.

CONTENTS

Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Strategic Questions Before you start . . 3Necessity Driven by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Strategic Initiatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Migration of Necessity vs Strategic Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Migration of Necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Strategic Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Platform Alternatives Data Center, Cloud or Hybrid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Major Decisions Relocate Existing IT Equipment or Purchase New . . . . . . . . 5Major Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Mitigating Risk Dollars vs. Downtime . 6Mitigating Minimizing Downtime . . . . . . . . 7

Identifying and Mitigating Risk Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Critical Planning Hidden Interdependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Migration Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Cloud Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Re-evaluate your Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10Critical Systems Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10Additional Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

Financial Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Contractual Obligations, Existing and New The Potential Pitfalls . . . . . . 12 Existing Contracts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12New Contracts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

Execution Logistics and Project Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14Transportation and Logistics . . . . . . . . . . . . .14Project Management Migration Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

Case Study Cloud Hosting Service Provider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

The Bottom Line - Maximize Migration Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

Biographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

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Strategic Questions Before you startThere are many drivers to a data center migration, however they generally breakdown into general categories, forced necessity or strategic benefits.

Necessity Driven by Existing data center out of space, power or cooling End of existing lease renewal options too expensive? Sale of building Sale of business or merger/divestiture?

Strategic Initiatives Lower total costs Better energy efficiency

Energy cost (rate per kWH)

Operating costs (facility and labor) Re-architect existing IT systems IT asset consolidation?

Restructuring your IT architecture i.e. virtualization?

New technology requirements/strategy?

Re-align business and IT strategies?

Business driven reorganization

Migration of Necessity vs Strategic Migration

Migration of NecessityA migration borne of necessity may be driven by an expiring lease or a sale or merger of your own company. In effect you are forced to vacate your present data center, typically by a fixed date. You may have some options such as trying to negotiate a short term extension to the lease of the present site, or you may have no options and have to vacate by a certain date. In some cases you may have the option to renew the contract, but per-haps at an unfavorable cost.

A forced migration, while not ideal, especially if there is only a short time to plan, may still offer an opportunity to perform some degree of strate-gic re-evaluation of the IT architecture. If you are already in a co-lo and are satisfied with the service, but not the costs, try to start negotiations for a contract renewal one full year before your current contract expires. This will give you advance infor-mation of expected price increases (putting you in a better position to re-negotiate them), as well as give you time to look at alternatives, in case you are forced to move due to unacceptable costs.

Strategic MigrationA Strategic Migration offers the greatest oppor-tunity and also presumably allows the maximum amount of time to re-evaluate existing IT systems and overall computing architecture and how well it supports long-term business goals. If a price increase is the primary driver from an existing data center or other service provider, it should only be one part of the decision to re-locate to another site or hosted services provider. It is common practice and good business to review and compare the proposed new costs of data center or service providers when faced with an upcoming contract renewal. It may be that your existing provider may also be limiting your options or flexibility when it comes to expanding your space or by limiting power density in your existing racks. In all cases the more time you allocate for a strategic re-evaluation of your enterprises position and long term business requirements, the more options you will have if it is determined that a migration is warranted. In some cases your IT architecture has shifted and you may find that your existing data center or service provider can no longer meet your new requirements. Or you have found that you can or need to operate in a different geographic loca-tion, perhaps where energy costs are significantly lower. You may also want to consider multi-site geographic diversity to improve you organizations business continuity or disaster recovery in the face of regionalized catastrophes.




Platform Alternatives Data Center, Cloud or HybridAs part of your migration decision making process it is important to realize that IT architecture, systems and strategies are constantly evolving. A migration can take many paths and forms. The days of fixed traditional computing resources have given way to a variety of technologies, architectures and strategies such as:

Virtualization Cloud Computing (public and private) Hosted Services Infrastructure-as-a-Service IaaS Platform-as-a-Service PaaS

It should be noted that many of these computing architectures can be successfully implemented individually or collectively, to provide the flexibility and scalability to meet changing conditions and highly dynamic computing demands as needed.

Migrate to Description

Virtualization A widely implemented technology platform that allows software (operating systems and applications) to function on virtual hardware (such as servers and storage systems) and which can also be replicated and moved across various and differing hardware platforms. This drives server consolidation and improves hardware utilization, thus improving overall energy efficiency. It also allows for seamless business continuity via redundant IT systems which can be replicated across multiple sites. It is an ideal platform for a seamless migration.

Dedicated Data Center or Co-location Provider Single Multi-site?

Having more than a single site can provide business continuity and disaster recovery and also can help avoid downtime during the migration.

Co-Location (Co-Lo) The Co-Lo provider supplies the space, power and cooling in a physical data center. Your organization owns all the IT hardware and software and is responsible for operating and supporting it (some providers offer optional support services). This allows your organization to operate almost any type of hardware or software they want including legacy systems.

Cloud Computing (Public and or Private)

A generalized, broadly encompassing term which covers a variety of technologies, such as virtualization, which can be provided as services (such as compute and storage). It can be implemented internally or externally, in combination with the service offerings below.

Hosted Services The Hosted Services vendor owns, operates and supports the IT equipment and application software. The most basic example: hosted email service.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service IaaS IaaS vendors provide the underlying hardware infrastructure (server, storage and network resources) and optionally perhaps the operating systems and virtualization technology. In this model, your IT department is still responsible for creating applications and application support.

Platform-as-a-Service PaaS PaaS vendors can provide both the underlying hardware infrastructure (server, storage and network resources), as well as an operating system and application platform. In this model, the vendor can provide standard or custom applications and application support, but your IT department can also still develop its own applications.

Hybrid - Mixed Model Your organization can combine a data center and multiple service options to provide flexibility and redundancy.




There are two general types of migration; the complete removal, transportation and re-installation of IT infrastructure or the purchase and installation of new IT systems at the new site. There are differing strategies and costs for each method. Moreover, migration can also include moving to a cloud services computing environment, either partially or completely. Of course, no migration is without risk and a significant amount of planning is required to mitigate the risk.

Major Decisions

Major Decisions Relocate Existing IT Equipment or Purchase New

Move existing IT equipment or purchase and install new hardware and software in new location?

Size and scope of migration will impact projected downtime if equipment needs to be relocated If all new equipment, is this going to a clone of existing systems or a major revamp of IT architecture?

Downtime window during migration and business impact issues

Single or multi-site organization? Business continuity Can carry full IT operations during migration window Disaster recovery Geographic location site diversity

Size and scope of migration

This will impact timeline and required resources (cost and number of personnel, as well as skill sets)




Mitigating Risk Dollars vs. DowntimeThe ideal scenario is a seamless migration with virtually no downtime. This can be achieved to one degree or another by the choices made in the original planning stages. There are various options, each with varying costs and trade-offs.

Migrate Existing Data Center to:

Methodology Technology Projected Downtime

Relative-Related Costs

New Data Center (or Co-Lo) (All new IT equipment)

All new IT equipment and software at new site. Fully tested and replicated data. Fully virtualized architecture for seamless Active-to-Active migration

No Downtime or near zero (seconds)

Highestupfrontnew equipment cost ModerateinstalllaborNohardwaremovecostsModeratetechnicalupgrade

labor (duplicate existing systems) Norevenuelosses(nooutage)

New Data Center (or Co-Lo)

(Move all existing IT equipment)

(Utilize disaster recovery site during migration)

Utilize DR site during migration of physical re-location of existing IT equipment to new site

Requires DR site pre-activation and pre-loaded with current data and all (or most critical) applications

Minimal to ModerateDuring 2 transitions(to DR site and again from DR site to new data center)

Lowestequipmentcost (see financial tip 3 year recommendation)HighestlaborandmovecostsHighesthardwaremovecostsHighestrevenuelosses(related

to length transition outage)HighDRactivationcosts

New Data Center (or Co-Lo)

(Move all existing IT equipment)

A complete physical re-location of existing IT equipment

Longest Total Outage while old hardware is moved, re-installed and restarted at the new data center

LowestequipmentcostHighestlaborandmovecostsHighestrevenuelosses

(related to long outage)

Cloud ServicesHostedservicesIAASPAAS

Migrate all IT applications to service provider(s). Fully tested applications and replicated data. Fully virtualized archi-tecture for seamless Active-to-Active migration.

Note: Not all applications may qualify for virtualized migration

No Downtime or near zero (seconds)

Ongoingservicescosts (long term)NonewequipmentcostNophysicalmovelaborcostsHightechnicallaborcosts

(software application migration to cloud services)Nolostrevenue(nooutage)

Hybrid Mixed Model Migrate some or all IT applications to cloud service provider(s) and also use data center for some or all applications. Fully tested applications and replicated data. Fully virtualized architecture is best for seamless Active-to-Active migration.

Note: Not all applications may qualify for virtualized migration

No Downtime or Near Zero (seconds)

Combinationoffixedupfrontcosts and ongoing services costs

Note: Legacy applications residing on proprietary or obsolete plat-forms may need to be physically moved




Mitigating Minimizing Downtime If a move of existing equipment is chosen, then it is clear that there will downtime for any applications that are not available at another site (or service). The amount of downtime will vary in relation to the amount of hardware being moved. Moreover, a BC-DR plan should be in place and be on standby, ready to be activated (or ideally already activated and handling the load during the migration). In the event that there are problems,

whether minor or catastrophic during the migra-tion (almost invariably there usually are some issues when moving hardware), you will not have the option to go back, since the hardware has been moved. The additional cost of extra days of operation of a DR site while problems are being resolved can become significant. The costs of these potential BC-DR costs need to be factored into the total costs when considering the decision to pur-chase new IT hardware vs moving existing systems.

The key strategic advantage of purchasing new equipment and installing it in the new site is the opportunity to upgrade to new technologies (and/or re-architect) and being able to test everything, without impacting existing production systems. Then if everything has been finalized, the migration switch over time could be nearly seam-less, ideally occurring in only a matter of seconds, instead of 48-72 hours over a holiday weekend. And of course, if something does go wrong, opera-tions can be switched back to the original systems since they were not de-activated to be moved.

If you are going to purchase all new IT equipment, you will still need to allow time to deal with the disposition of all the equipment remaining at the data center you are leaving, after the migration. Once you are fully operational at the new site, you need to completely remove the old equip-ment and decommission it. While most organi-zations already have standard procedures for decommissioning old equipment (i.e. all stored data completely destroyed), it does take time and resources. Unlike a typical IT refresh, removal and decommissioning of an entire site requires more time and significantly more resources due to the size and scale of the project. If you normally decommission and dispose of equipment with in-house personnel, consider engaging in an outside service provider to perform these tasks and that may also buy the equipment as well (which may help offset some the disposal costs or provide net cash for the equipment). In any event, this should be included in the project timeline, since you may face additional costs if your equipment is still pres-ent when your contract terminates at the old site.

The key strategic advantage of purchasing new

equipment and installing it in the new site is the

opportunity to upgrade to new technologies (and/

or re-architect) and being able to test everything,

without impacting existing production systems.

Legacy Applications

Legacy applications are somewhat like sleeping dogs, they are usually best left alone. Nonetheless, a migra-tion may be the catalyst to look fur-ther into the status and feasibility of moving or upgrading an old applica-tion onto a modern platform. If the legacy application is also irrevocably bound to older hardware, special provisions should be investigated to accommodate the tighter environ-mental requirements of older legacy hardware.

TIP!




Critical Planning Hidden Interdependencies The older and more established the existing data center, the more likely it is that there are more hid-den pitfalls. There are many fundamental elements that are taken for granted in an operational system that are critical to other systems. Something as simple as ensuring that DHCP and DNS services are up and running before other systems are started, can cause problems when bringing up the new site. While these basic issues should be obvious to the IT staff, other hidden or less obvious services, applications and hardware level interdependences can trip up a migration. It is imperative to realisti-cally assess the knowledge and the migration experience of the IT staff, as well as the validity and granularity of documentation of your entire envi-ronment; current systems, network and software asset management, as well as hardware documen-tation details, very early into the planning stages.

Migration TimelineThe search for a new site (or hosted or cloud ser-vices) and the due diligence to vet the new co-lo provider or service providers, as well as interview-ing potential consulting firms can take a long time. It is critical to allow sufficient time for planning for the migration and critical milestones for even a simple migration. Moreover, as previously discussed, if you are going to use the migration to upgrade or re-architect your IT systems, this can take additional time while being planned and vari-ous options investigated. The larger the organiza-tion and the more applications involved (whether off-the-shelf or custom written), the greater the time needed to plan, model and test the proposed new environment. Senior management must be made fully aware of this very early and the time-line expectations be made very clear or else the project will be seen as behind schedule. This may result in upper management pressure to suddenly rush to complete the migration because of mis-communicated and erroneous time and cost expectations.

Undocumented Knowledge

There is a myriad of embedded knowl-edge that resides in the minds and ex-perience of the staff, that is presumed to be well known, but may be undoc-umented. In addition, there are many items that only former staff who are no longer with the organization un-derstood completely, and while those systems are still operational, however once moved, the current staff may not have the depth of knowledge to prop-erly support or troubleshoot them. This type of undocumented knowl-edge may not have been purposely withheld. However, the lack of this undocumented knowledge can occur quite often, but may not be discov-ered until the migration occurs and is a potential pitfall to the current staff or any outside resources that may be engaged during a migration.

This potential exposure should be taken into account as part of the contingency planning. When taking inventory of the systems to be mi-grated (hardware and software), try to identify and highlight those systems which lack detailed documentation and also check available in-house staff knowledge. If necessary, contact and engage the vendors of the hard-ware and software of these systems to fill in any gaps, well before the migra-tion occurs. Even if your staff is knowl-edgeable, it may pay to have an in-dependent consultant simply review the plan.

TIP!

Identifying and Mitigating Risk Factors




Cloud ComputingCloud computing burst on the scene in the last few years and is still a somewhat nebulous term that broadly covers a wide variety of Internet based services. There are many promised potential benefits from cloud services, such as the flexibil-ity to pay only for what you use (or as you grow), as well as the ability to meet peak loads only as needed with no massive equipment investment. Some organizations are just testing or piloting cloud based projects, while others have already been operating their applications for several years. It should be noted that while there are many issues both pro and con to cloud based services, the industry is still developing and maturing. Typically, if you migrate from traditional enterprise architec-ture you must adopt some or all of your applica-tions to the architecture of the providers platform. Generally speaking, at this time there are no real cloud standards, and as such, you cannot easily move your application from one service provider to another.

In regard to the clouds presumed availability, there is the promise of automatic failover to a providers alternate sites (assuming you contract for this option), should there be a problem at one of that vendors facilities. However, with cloud service vendors it is a sometimes difficult to obtain much information on the tier rating of the providers physical facilities, and in some cases, the failover functions may not always work correctly. There have been numerous high profile failures from major cloud services providers. These potential failure points are something that should improve as the cloud services market matures and the technology improves, however these potential exposures should be considered very carefully before considering committing your entire organization exclusively to a cloud services only architecture.

Availability Tier Ratings

When considering the Availability of a data center be aware that claimed avail-ability numbers (i.e. the number of 9s), as well as the Tier rating, which is a rating system either based the Uptime Institute requirements or the on generalized inter-pretations of the TIA 942 series guidelines. There are many tier-1 and tier-2 sites that have very little or no downtime issues and some tier 3 or tier 4 sites that may have had problems. Not every organization is forced to strictly adhere to any or all tier guidelines. Having N+1 or 2N power and cooling redundancy may be your mini-mum mandatory requirement or simply nice to have, depending on your busi-

ness requirement and budgets. While it is likely that a site with more redundancy will reduce your likelihood of experiencing a problem, clearly you should review their operational history. Moreover examine their contingency plans and recovery pro-cedures (as well as your own) in the event of a problem. The best advice is to ask for customer references that have equipment in place for a year or more at the particular site that you are considering. As a general rule higher tier rated sites have higher ba-sic space and power provisioning costs, while the energy costs are impacted by underlying local utility rates.




Re-evaluate your Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery PlansWhile the above events may give you cause for concern, in point of fact it should act as a catalyst and an opportunity to prepare for this eventuality and should be factored into you migration deci-sions. Business continuity and disaster recovery need to be considered initially as an inherent ne-cessity, not as an afterthought. Part of your migra-tion planning should include strategically locating your data centers in secure diverse locations. Therefore, you have the opportunity to proactively create a more robust information system capable

of ensuring the overall survivability and availability of your organizations critical computing resources. If your organizations BC & DR plans and systems are not as robust or complete as they could be, then the time and effort to re-evaluate them should be part of the overall consideration when reviewing the strategic migration planning.

Critical Systems AssessmentFor strategic purposes assess each application as to required levels of criticality. You may want to reassess what levels of redundancy different sys-tems require, rather than selecting just one level for everything (this applies to the physical data center facility tier level, as well as IT equipment and software redundancies and based failover capabilities). This would allow a better allocation of resources to improve availability for the most critical applications, perhaps while reducing costs for other lower priority functions.

If you are simply migrating from one single site to another, consider the incremental cost to dupli-cate/replicate some of the most critical systems to a second facility (be it a co-lo or a hosted service or cloud service provider). This may require some re-architecting of the IT systems, but the migration offers an ideal opportunity to improve your most critical applications overall availability, since some or all your systems may need to go down during the migration (especially if you are moving existing IT hardware).

Additional ResourcesThe migration team needs to fully understand all the requirements and potential pitfalls. The experi-ence and technical knowledge of the migration team should be part of the evaluation. If there is very limited or no migration experience, consider engaging outside consulting resources experience in migration. Even if they have migration experi-ence, consider engaging additional resources during critical phases of the migration (such as the equipment move), since it is unlikely that internal staff can handle it alone, within a limited migration timeframe window.

Pitfalls and Risks The unexpected is the new normal

100 Year events seem to happen every year

Recently, the New York Tri-state metro area was so heavily impacted by the unprecedented super storm Sandy, that many areas were flooded and without power for a week or more. Moreover, data centers and major telecommuni-cations nodes in lower Manhattan were flooded and damaged or rendered tem-porarily dark, until power was restored 4 days later. Even the venerable NY stock exchange was shut down for 2 days for the first time in over 100 years, and only through extraordinary efforts, was it able to re-open on emergency generator power. Even though data centers have back-up generators and locally stored diesel fuel, in some cases the generators or the fuel supply systems were flooded and rendered inoperable, or the diesel re-fueling supply logistics were impact-ed. Of course floods are far from the only danger, earthquakes and other natural disasters are also a consideration when it comes to data center location.




Financial ConsiderationsThere are a wide variety of cost components to consider that make up the direct cost of the migration itself. Moreover, from an overall strategic analysis, the long term recurring costs (or cost saving), as well as the projected opera-tional benefits after migrating should be factored as well. The migration chart on page 6 is only meant to provide a general summary of the basic cost factors. Clearly, each migration option has dif-ferent cost areas and each organizations scenario is different and requires a realistic assessment of costs, as well as allocating reserve funds for unex-pected expenses or contingences.

While it would seem that moving existing IT equip-ment would be the lowest cost method, this may not always be the case. The existing IT infrastruc-ture that is currently operational may represent a large capital investment, however the age of the equipment should be taken into account when

considering the decision to relocate the existing hardware or purchase new equipment for the new site. As noted earlier, 3 years is the typical func-tional life for commodity servers, however higher value equipment, such as storage arrays and core network equipment, may have a useful life of 5-7 years. There may also be tax implications regard-ing the depreciated value of the IT systems, which should be taken into account. Also the original manufacturers basic warranties usually expire after 3 years. Of course, if the equipment is leased (typically 3 years), then it usually becomes a very clear strategic reason to purchase new equipment. New IT equipment is also far more energy efficient. If you are moving to a co-lo the cost of power will have a significant impact on your long term operating costs and should also be factored into the financial equation.

Software costs are a significant issue as well. In particular, the terms and conditions of software licenses and support contracts vary from vendor to vendor. In some cases the vendor may allow you to install the existing software on the new hardware for test purposes only, before making it an active license. While in other cases they may not permit it, or have additional fees. Another common problem is on older legacy systems (with software linked to hardware) which may not run on new hardware.

Financial

Try to coordinate the migration so it coincides with the functional age-out or end-of-lease of the existing IT equipment. The ideal is to pur-chase new IT equipment to be pre-installed at the new facility (while writing off or selling the old hard-ware). The migration should be syn-chronized as much as possible with the refresh schedule of the aged out hardware (typically 3 years for servers). This avoids the significant expense, risk and migration time for moving the existing (perhaps near-ly obsolete) hardware.

TIP!

Three years is the typical functional life for commodity

servers, however higher value equipment, such as

storage arrays and core network equipment, may have

a useful life of 5-7 years.




Existing Contracts Besides the technical migration issues to be planned and tested, there are a litany of more mundane, yet important contractual obligations to contend with. This involves contracts for both the new site, as well as any obligations at the site you are exiting from. The most obvious are the contractual agreement for the data center new facility (or hosted service) that you are migrating to. Do not wait until you have chosen a new site (or service), based on technical assessments and apparent costs comparisons alone. During the early stages of your search for a new site or service provider, besides a price proposal, get a sample copy of the contractual agreement. A major area to review carefully that may contain potential hidden cost exposures are how power costs are calculated (see Power section, page 13). Moreover be aware how much you are constrained by a low power density limit per cabinet (which would force you to take more racks and/or floor/cage space, if you are planning on using high-density IT equipment). In addition, there may be some wording in some clauses that may add significant costs for moves, adds and changes, which are common occurrences that will occur over the course of a multiyear agreement.

The end of the lease or contract for your old site will also have to be reviewed for any terms and conditions regarding early termination (if applicable), as well as any normal end of term requirements, such a complete removal of your equipment (you may not be able to just abandon the obsolete IT equipment or cabling). In the case of traditional rental space in a mixed use build-ing, it may require the restoration of the rented office space to the same condition it was originally leased in (perhaps even requiring the removal of

raised floors and CRAC systems). In addition, if you experience a delay and are unable to move out all your equipment in time, there may be significantly higher monthly costs if you need a short term extension.

Hardware service contracts should be reviewed to see if there are any stipulations regarding re-location coverage issues and re-certification or re-commissioning requirements. Software licenses may have permission requirements, restrictions, or even fees for re-installing and transferring software to new hardware.

Contractual Obligations, Existing and New The Potential Pitfalls

Contractual Obligations Checklist

f Entry and exit issues and obligations

f DC facilities overlap and delays may require extension cost and penalties

f Network transitions provisioning lead times and contracts

f IT equipment leases

f Disposal and disposition of old equipment

f Software licenses

f Support contracts




New ContractsPart of the migration evaluation is considering various options. While not the only choice, many organizations are considering migrating to a co-location or hosted services provider. While this paper is not meant as a complete guide to picking a co-location or hosting service provider, be aware that each provider has different offerings that may generally look the same on the surface, yet may differ substantially in your ultimate final costs.

At a co-location provider you can rent space by the cabinet (or even a cabinet if you are a very small firm) or in a caged-in area for multiple cabinets. There are base charges for each cabinet or per sq. ft. for a caged area, as well as power and network connectively. Some co-los allow you to supply your own cabinets (usually in the caged scenario) while others require you to use their cabinets.

Power

Power represents the most significant cost and bears the most scrutiny. When it comes to provid-ing power, each provider has their own formula. Some charge per-circuit (i.e. a fixed price for a 120V/20A or a 208V/30A circuit), while other sites may provide actual metered energy usage based charges. Depending on how many circuits you need and how heavily you load them, this will greatly impact your monthly costs. Example, if you are in a fixed price, per-circuit contract, using a 20 Amp circuit, then you will be paying the same price whether you draw 1 amp or 16 amps.

Not all providers have fully metered branch circuit monitoring or even if they do, they are under no obligation to charge you for actual power used, unless it is specified in the contract. Even if your contract is for actual energy used (in kWH per month), be aware what the underlying rate (and rate multipliers) are based on, as well as what index the rate escalators clauses are tied to. If you want to have A-B redundant power feeds for your IT equipment, the prices vary for a secondary or redundant circuit, typically ranging from 20-50% of the price of the primary circuit (plus a setup or installation charge). If you are planning for high density computing, think in terms of 208 or 230V power, which is more energy efficient, and also

consider three phase power, to allow for future growth flexibility and energy efficiency (see Energy Efficiency Tip above).

Service Level Agreements

For co-location, hosted or cloud service providers, examine the contractual language of any Service Level Agreements SLA to see what levels of avail-ability and remedies are promised. You may find that if there are problems you may have limited options or any real recourse to break the contract, depending on the terms of your SLA and exclu-sions. It will not mean much to you if you get a one day credit or even a months credit because you were down for more than an hour that month, the impact to your business will far exceed the value of the credit.

Does the promised level of availability exclude any planned downtime for maintenance? It is easy to say that there are Five 9s if you exclude planned downtime. There is no doubt that most co-lo operators work very diligently to ensure that you do not experience problems. Nonetheless, sometimes the unplanned happens and what procedures and resources they have to mitigate the problem and restore normal service is what differentiates any of the service providers. And if they have repeated issues that you find totally unacceptable, can you terminate the contract without penalties.

Energy Efficiency

Energy Efficiency is another factor to consider relative to the age of your existing IT equipment. As mentioned elsewhere, if your commodity hard-ware is 2-3 years old, it may be near or at end-of-life. New IT hardware is also much more energy efficient and should lower your per circuit charges and total electrical capacity require-ments, as well as also lowering your monthly energy costs.

TIP!




Aside from power provisioning, you will need network connectivity to carriers. Some co-lo sites are carrier neutral and allow you to connect to any carrier, while others only allow you to connect to carriers that they have in-house relationships with. The costs of bandwidth and the choice of carriers and carrier diversity, needs to be consid-ered carefully. How is your connectivity delivered (i.e. the handoff and demark point). In some cases there are cross-connect charges, in addition to the basic bandwidth and port access charges. Are you getting internet connectivity from the co-los network, via Ethernet and billed as part of a metered bandwidth and demand contract? If your connections are directly to the carriers, cross check related contractual clauses, such as the ability to limit term length to coincide with your tenancy in the co-lo site. Also be aware of who you are con-tracting with for your services; the carrier directly or the co-lo operator. This can affect your future options, should you decide to move to another co-lo or perhaps change your operational model.

Communication carriers and web hosting con-tracts are also areas that needs to be closely scrutinized for both the new and existing opera-tion models. If you are going to continue using the same service providers there may be fewer issues to transition to the new site as well as the overlap for the turn-up at the new site and termination of service at the old site, as well as any public website DNS and network address schemes (example; was a public IP address range assigned to you directly by the carrier or owned by the co-lo). However, if you are simply terminating services with your existing service provider, be aware that there may be issues with early termination costs, as well as difficultly with domain names, DNS and network address schemes, if it is controlled by them. Com-munications providers contracts expiration dates need to be reviewed carefully since they may or may not be coterminous with the length of your existing data center lease.

Transportation and Logistics If you have decided that there is going to be a complete physical re-location of IT equipment be aware that in most cases it is best to remove each piece of IT hardware from the racks and properly document and pack them individually to avoid damage in transit. This becomes a signifi-cant cost component of the move. It also should not be underestimated in the project timeline, in particular in the shutdown time window. Even if the move is only just 10 miles away, it will take a significant amount of time to de-rack and pack the IT hardware, load the truck, transport and then unload, unpack, re-rack and re-connect each piece of equipment. And if hundreds (or thousands) of pieces of IT equipment are involved, the time required may far exceed the allocated dark period (unless your organization has a redundant data center which will remain available during the migration). While it is possible to move a loaded

rack of servers, which would reduce the total time, it is not generally advised. In either case, an experienced moving firm that specializes in safely packing and transporting IT equipment should be utilized to minimize the possibility of damaged equipment.

The safest method for a wholesale equipment move is to just document every detail and repli-cate the exact placement of all IT equipment and network cabling in each rack at the new site. However, be aware that it is also an opportunity to re-organize the equipment at the new site to improve any pre-existing layout issues (such as better balancing of heat loads to minimize hot spots or improving patch cable jungles). These less-than-ideal layout issues typically develop over many years, as new IT equipment was just installed in any available rack location for simple expediency.

Execution Logistics and Project Management

Communications and Networking Connectivity




You may find that in many cases, if the IT equip-ment is more than 3 years old (and in some case as little as only 2 years old), that overall it may be more cost effective to purchase new equipment than the cost of moving it. This is especially true for hardware such as commodity volume serv-ers. However, bear in mind that you must allow enough overlap time so that the expiring lease does not end before the migration is completed (also allow for a margin of error should there be any delays or technical problems that require a rollback).

Project Management Migration Experience Besides the prerequisite skill sets required for technical personnel, good project management

is essential. While the IT staff may be very compe-tent at operating the IT systems, nonetheless most organizations do not have extensive migration experience. In addition to the direct IT technical aspects, this requires a good deal of high level of project management skills and experience. Project managers need to work closely with IT technical staff to understanding the key elements contained in the timelines, such as lead-times and interde-pendencies of critical milestones, which are crucial to a successful migration. Be sure to identify all stakeholders and decision makers, as well as the primary points of contact for major decisions; Man-agement, IT, and Facilities. Create a central knowl-edge repository; a master database of documenta-tion, assets, key players and their expertise.

Case Study Cloud Hosting Service Provider

Enterprise Consciousness for Business Net-works (ECFBN), based in Virginia, provides cloud hosting services, as well as co-location services for their clients. They focus on provid-ing enterprise-grade, highly flexible and scal-able computing for small and medium sized businesses.

ECFBN owns the servers, storage, and network devices used to deliver the hosting service, but their business model is based on using data center co-location to house that equip-ment. For the past nine years, they were a customer of a large co-location provider in Northern Virginia. This year their contract was coming up for renewal and while their exist-ing co-location solution was stable, they were disappointed with the service levels from the providers management. ECFBN felt there was a general attitude that their business was not really that important and ECFBN felt somewhat ignored when it came time to re-new their contract. As a result of these service levels, ECFBN evaluated many co-location al-ternatives and decided to move their IT infra-structure to RagingWire in Ashburn, Virginia. They have successfully migrated 18 racks of equipment, including over 100 servers.

In speaking with Brent Doherty, president of ECFBN, when asked what was the prime mo-tivation to migrate to another co-lo provider after nine years, the answer was clear; large annual price increases and the lack of metered power. Like any business, fundamental oper-ating costs affect their own profitability, and this also impacts the market competitiveness of the service offerings of their present and potential future clients. ECFBN believed that their customer base would not tolerate un-warranted annual price increases. Moreover, without metered power, ECFBN could not offer the fairly priced, flexible, scalable hosting services their clients required.

Of course, lower costs alone are not the only criterion. ECFBN also needed a proven, highly reliable data center operator that would help support them during their migration, as well as having the flexibility meet their future growth. By careful planning they also used the migration as an opportunity to refresh their hardware platform and rebrand their business, thus optimizing the transition and improving their long term business perfor-mance and energy efficiency.




Instead of viewing a migration as a huge burden and potential crisis, consider it a catalyst to make senior management understand its potential strategic benefits and get their support as early as possible. This will greatly improve the likelihood of a successful project. A data center migration is a huge undertaking, of which proper planning can take several months or even a year or more, depending on the size and scale of the project. Do not underestimate the value of an early, hon-est self-assessment of your existing environment before making any commitments. Dive deeply by examining the overall strategic purpose and ulti-mate goals of the migration. When done correctly a migration offers the opportunity to improve or replace many sub-optimal systems or practices that have crept into the existing environment over time, but avoid finger pointing, only strive to improve them in the new environment.

Once the analysis has been completed and the decision to move forward with the migration has been made, it would be ill-advised to oversimplify all the tangible and intangible elements that need to be fully understood and evaluated when consid-ering any type of migration. Do not underestimate the projected direct and indirect costs. You may be surprised at the amount of time and resources (both internal and external) involved. Also allow for contingences and reserve funds accordingly. This reaction is especially common to those who have not had any prior experience with a major mi-gration. While relying primarily on internal person-nel many appear to save costs, be aware that they cannot simultaneously handle their existing daily workload and still devote full attention and time to the proper planning for the migration.

There are consulting firms that can provide addi-tional resources for both planning and execution. In addition, It should be part of the equation to investigate the number of options that are offered

in todays market by a wide array of data center providers who can also provide additional tech-nical assistance, in addition to rack space. While there are a multitude of factors to be considered, in the end you will have to ask if building, owning and operating your own data centers is a strategic advantage to your business, or just a burden on internal resources and capital, perhaps best to be outsourced to a better qualified external organiza-tion. This fundamental question should help you make the ultimate decision, by closely examining your core business goals and the best use of key internal resources in your own organization.

In order to maximize the benefits of a migration, a cohesive and holistic approach is required by the organizations senior executives, IT and the facilities departments all working together toward a common goal. Only by setting business expec-tations and being open to new ideas, as well as sharing knowledge and mutual cooperation, will the newest and most efficient technologies be successfully deployed and supported of the long term. The motivation for this must come from senior management and be driven from the top down throughout the organization. This is not only true in the original migration discussions and initial decisions, but even more so over time, to be able to remain flexible to changing technologies and meet ever evolving business challenges.

The Bottom Line Maximize Migration Benefits

In order to maximize the benefits of a migration,

a cohesive and holistic approach is required by

the organizations senior executives, IT and the

facilities departments all working together toward

a common goal.




Data Center Knowledge (DCK) is a leading online source of daily news and analysis about the data center industry. We cover the latest developments and trends driving the powerful growth in demand for mission-critical facilities, the challenges and opportunities presented by high-density computing and its impact on power and cooling, and the evolution of the industry to include cloud computing and modular data centers.

For more information about Data Center Knowledge, contact:Edwin Rothrock 513-322-5616 [email protected]

Julius Neudorfer is the CTO and founder of North American Access Technologies, Inc. (NAAT). Based in Westchester, NY, NAATs clients include Fortune 500 firms and government agencies. NAAT has been designing and implementing Data Center Infrastructure and related technology projects for over 20 years.

Julius is a member of AFCOM, ASHRAE, BICSI, IEEE and The Green Grid, as well as a Certified Data Center Design Professional CDCDP designer and instructor. Most recently, he is also an instructor for the US Department of Energy Data Center Energy Practitioner DCEP program.

Julius has written numerous articles and whitepa-pers for various IT and Data Center publications and has delivered seminars and webinars on data center power, cooling and efficiency.

RagingWire Data Centers RagingWire designs, builds, and operates high power density data cen-ters that deliver 100% availability. The company has over 650,000 square feet of critical data center infrastructure in Northern California and Ashburn, Virginia and the highest customer loyalty scores in the industry. Their patented power delivery system and EPA ENERGY STAR rated facilities lead the data center market in reliability and efficiency. With flexible co-location solutions for retail and wholesale buyers, a carrier neutral philosophy, and unmatched customer service, RagingWire meets the needs of top enterprise, Internet, and govern-ment organizations. More information is available at www.ragingwire.com.

Biographies

http://www.DataCenterKnowledge.comhttp://www.ragingwire.com/mailto:edwin.rothrock%40inetinteractive.com?subject=http://www.ragingwire.com

Executive SummaryStrategic Questions Before you startNecessity Driven byStrategic Initiatives

Migration of Necessity vs Strategic MigrationMigration of NecessityStrategic Migration

Platform Alternatives Data Center, Cloud or HybridMajor Decisions Relocate Existing IT Equipment or Purchase NewMitigating Risk Dollars vs. DowntimeMitigating-Minimizing Downtime Critical Planning Hidden Interdependencies Migration Timeline

Additional ResourcesCritical Systems AssessmentRe-evaluate your Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery PlansCloud ComputingFinancial ConsiderationsExisting Contracts

New ContractsExecution Logistics and Project ManagementTransportation and Logistics Project Management Migration Experience

Case Study Cloud Hosting Service ProviderThe Bottom Line - Maximize Migration BenefitsBiographies

Documents

Guide to DC Migration