DataCenterMoving.com - Making You the Super Hero of Your Move!

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is a rigorous approach to ensuring your business can continue to operate in the event of an unplanned outage. Despite all the attention to BCP, the lesson of Geographic Diversity continues to be a lesson learned but a lesson not remembered.

A transformer explosion at hosting company, The Planet in Houston,  on May 31, 2008 forced the company to take the entire facility offline until tests could be completed to allow the generators to supply power. This meant 9,000 servers were without power.

It simply is no longer sufficient to utilize a single location for your operations even if you have made that single location highly available.

If you can remember only one lesson in Geographic Diversity, remember to diversify your DNS at another location.

Attention to business resumption would lead you to conclude you need to do more than just provide for DNS diversity. Colorado is uniquely positioned to provide data centers that are geographically diverse from most locations in North America. While the debate continues about the required separation between data centers, consider there are 9,000 servers without power at a Houston data center. If some of them had geographic diversity even a few miles away, those businesses could have resumed their operations.

Data Center Relocation, Data Center Site Selection

Many organizations fail to plan properly for the post-move phase. Circuits and facilities need to be decommissioned, rapid response teams need to be ready to resolve unforeseen problems, and executive management needs to provide the proper budget to this phase so that staff is not stretched to the breaking point.

Executives need to be aware that during this phase is often where they lose the most staff. This happens for a number of reasons including staff who believes they did not receive the proper recognition for their efforts during the move to those who were going to leave anyway. You need a post-move plan that goes beyond technology and addresses the organizational issues that a move uncovers.

The first step is to evaluate each individual on the likelihood of departure versus the impact to your organization. Performing this retention risk analysis prior to moving can help you retain the individuals who have the largest positive impact to your organization’s success.

Corporate Relocations, Data Center Relocation

As reported by Rich Miller at DataCenterKnowlege, forward-thinking Regional Economic Development Agencies are focusing on attracting large data center projects. The debate continues on the real economic impact after accounting for tax incentives and infrastructure improvements given the relatively small amount of jobs these large footprint data centers create. What many economic development agencies may not realize is that there are many more data center-related jobs at stake than the mega-projects most often reported in the media.

We move data centers of all sizes. Most data center moves are a result of a larger corporate relocation project which means jobs of many types will follow the data center move…not just the jobs to keep the data center running. What can economic development agencies do to highlight their region’s strengths?

1. Package Your Infrastructure - Power, Fiber, and Transportation needs to be readily available to the advance teams for evaluation.
2. Assess Your Available Inventory for Data Center Readiness - Your region can be quickly eliminated because you can’t provide an inventory of available properties that answer fundamental data center questions. Items such as existing data center raised floor height, generators, proximity to fiber paths, are but a few of the items a relocation team wants to know. Most commercial listing agents have no idea what type of data center space exists in their inventories.
3. Pre-form a Welcome Team - Advance evaluation teams get on airplanes to have a look. You can increase your odds with a multi-disciplinary Welcome Team to guide their evaluators and answer their questions. If you stuff this team with local politicos and Realtors, you’re missing an opportunity to put technical experts in front of the advance relocation evaluation teams.
4. Don’t Just Sit There - You can build all the FAQ pages, marketing collateral, and databases you want, but assuming a corporate relocation team is going to find you is a bad bet. Seek creative ways to let others know about your area including us. Send your information to dcmove@e-oasis.com. Also consider industry-specific conferences and trade shows to highlight your area.

Contact us to inquire about how we can help you with your Regional Economic Development efforts related to data center moves. We have a number of innovative services that can help you understand and attract organizations who relocate their data centers.

Corporate Relocations, Data Center Relocation, Data Center Site Selection

Many data center or computer room moves are often part of a larger corporate relocation. In the early decision-making process, a judgment is made to determine the feasibility of the move and the cost. The computer room or data center expenses can often be an after-thought.

In the rush to get to a budget number, executive management is left without a realistic view of the costs in money, time, and internal resources. Setting an unrealistic expectation means the proper lead-time, coordination, and notification may be inadequate.

Just how do you calculate your moving expenses for a relocation?

Any suggestions you find with a Google search will be limited in the scope and depth of detail and are likely to leave you wanting more. Every relocation is different and those differences loom large in your relocation cost budget. Pressure to “get me some numbers” often results in missing important details.

Step 1 - Document your relocation assumptions.

Step 2 - Don’t grab someone else’s move template from the web, build your own because your relocation details are important.

Step 3 - Get an outside assessment of your move template to ensure you haven’t missed entire categories or important details.

Step 4 - Estimate or get quotes for your move categories. Separate the technical elements from the furniture and facilities and assign the technical elements to technical experts (not move coordinators). Don’t make the mistake of relying on Google searches for normalized costs such as per square foot numbers or average cost for a data center relocation.

Step 5 - Vary your assumptions and determine that effect on the costs you obtained in Step 4.

Step 6 - Add contingency to your range of costs you obtained in Step 5.

Step 7 - Now you are ready to present a realistic expense estimate for your relocation.

Corporate Relocations, Data Center Relocation

Most data center move planning often overlooks the topic of acclimation. Your equipment has likely been powered on for years with spinning disks and CPU’s operating at high temperatures inside a closed environment. When this equipment is powered off, it typically is rushed out the door and “shrink-wrapped” on the way to the moving truck. During transit, the equipment then undergoes both temperature and humidity changes. Upon arrival, the natural tendency is to power everything up as soon as possible to avoid downtime. This rush can have undesired consequences with both obvious and unexplained equipment failures.

Acclimating the equipment to the new environment before powering it on is a step often overlooked. Out of ignorance or because it costs downtime to let equipment sit, many organizations unwisely skip this step. Condensation often forms as a result of temperature and humidity changes and that condensation can take 48 hours or more to dissipate.

Many equipment manufacturers do not properly address acclimation either giving no guidance on time-frames or giving ridiculously long acclimation times. Use common sense. Use climate-controlled trucks where you need to minimize the acclimation time during transit. Use extra care where you have older, spinning disks that have not been powered off for a long time. Require your vendors of special equipment to document in writing their recommended acclimation times.

Above all, program adequate time in your relocation project plan to acclimate your equipment after transit. Data Center Relocation Best Practices always include acclimation in the data center move procedures as a way to control unexpected equipment mortalities during the data center move.

Data Center Checklist, Data Center Relocation

Writing a Statement of Work (SOW) for a Data Center Relocation can be a daunting task. Has your Google search for an example to jump start your efforts left you frustrated?

While there are entire books on the process of writing a good SOW, you likely don’t have the time to read them. Worse, they don’t include the kind of details you’d like for the data center move.

What are the Minimal SOW Elements?

You’ll need these minimum elements in every Statement of Work:

• Define the Scope
• Define the Deliverables
• Define the Timeline and Period of Performance
• Define the Evaluation Criteria
• Define the Reporting Requirements
• Add your Terms and Conditions

What Data Center Relocation Elements should you include?

You can appreciate that without knowing your specific details, it is impossible to capture the critical details that would make your move successful. Be sure and have your SOW peer reviewed before releasing it to your Vendors. Here are some questions to help you get specific for your project:

• What are the origin and destination locations?
• What total square footage is in each location?
• How much equipment needs to be moved?
• What downtime is acceptable?
• What work is being done by your staff and what work do you want the vendor to do?
• Do you have a master move timeline?
• Do you have special equipment that needs to be moved?
• Do you need specific technical expertise?
• Do you have enough time to run a competitive process, or do you need to fast track and get a Vendor on-board quickly?

Is the Perfect SOW the answer?

A Data Center Relocation can be a complex undertaking. A well written statement of work is but one step in this complex journey. Ultimately, the success of your move depends on a number of critical elements — not the least of which is allowing enough time to plan your move.

Learn more about Data Center Moves with our Free Data Center Relocation guide.

Corporate Relocations, Data Center Relocation, Data Center Site Selection

The greening of the data center continues to grow in media popularity. In the rush to sell products and services that tie into the Green Buzz, there isn’t much common sense being applied to the problem.

1. As long as data centers continue to use the extremely inefficient method of air-side cooling, there will be no meaningful reduction in cooling costs. These costs can amount to more than 50% of the total energy expended in the data center.

2. You cannot claim to “Green” your own data center if you don’t measure the power you are consuming in the first place. Install an inexpensive sub-meter and link the CIO’s compensation to the improvements.

3. Virtualization alone is not a greening strategy. First hand experience shows that IT (Information Technology) staff rarely retires a machine that’s been replaced…they just repurpose it. What is the financial incentive to retire a capital asset before its depreciation is realized? It simply is not being done. Virtualization, which stands on its own for benefits, will actually accentuate the energy usage in the short term.

4. Congress is probably more interested in taxing the Internet Economy than in saving electricity. Data Centers are convenient targets since other efforts at taxation have failed. Additionally, the movement towards a carbon footprint based tax continues to gain momentum and the EPA report is one of many strategies to further this objective. Watch for more from Congress as it build its case for taxation and look for increased industry realization of these effects.

5. Does it strike anyone else that if data centers consume 1.5% of the energy as the EPA report states, then there is some serious work missing on the other 98.5% of the consumption? For starters, how much energy is being wasted because Corporate America leaves their desktops powered on with the power-saving modes completely bypassed? Perhaps we might collectively consider the entire issue of consumption where data centers represent one small component?

6.Energy efficiency ahead of the meter is often overlooked. Shouldn’t the power losses from generation to the data center be factored into the green data center equation? Energy efficiency can be increased as much as 5% by placing load near generation. Why? Because all utilities factor transmission line loss into their rates. That means you pay for the electricity you use plus the electricity it takes in the form of transmission loss to get the energy to you. Locating closer to generation capability is a greener option.

I received a suggestion that I publish a revision to our guide with a new title “The Green Guide to Data Center Moving” supported by the idea that moving a data center is a good time to virtualize it.

While it sounds like a clever way to ride the “Green Wave”, the counter argument is that by the time an organization is moving their data center, they’ve likely already made the common data center design mistakes in their new facility. Until someone repeals the laws of thermodynamics, building a new data center with air-side cooling is the costliest mistake they can make if they want a green data center.

Our updated version of our free data center moving guide will be out in a few months with the same boring title, but it might be useful to include some Big Green Myths.

In the meantime, expect the services and products riding the Big Green Wave to continue to enjoy the surf.

Data Center Relocation

The Wyoming Business Council has earmarked $5 Million to provide reduction of the utility costs for electrical and/or broadband for the recruitment/growth of Tier II, Tier III and Tier IV Data Centers.
See Wyoming (Enrolled Act NO. 85), Appropriations for details.

Incentives have played major roles in recent data center location announcements. While Cheyenne has been garnering most of the data center attention, towns like Wheatland (70 miles north of Cheyenne) could also benefit.

Data Center Relocation, Data Center Site Selection

While the data center green marketing push continues to gain momentum, the measured progress for green data centers is suspect. It’s unclear how much of this activity is designed to fuel capital spending and how much really saves energy.

If you ask almost any CIO (or CFO, CTO, or CEO), you’ll learn they have no idea how much energy they are consuming…let alone how much energy IT (Information Technology) could be saving. The CIO (or anyone for that matter) is rarely measured against a Green report card.

In moving organizations into their brand new data centers, it’s no longer shocking to see the same data center design mistakes being repeated. There are some decades-old recommendations that still don’t get followed that can have a direct effect on energy consumption.

• CRAC (Computer Room Air Conditioners) that don’t communicate with each other will waste energy “fighting” each other based on their own local conditions - While ASHRAE recommended way back in 1988 that this is a source of waste, walk around your brand new data center and observe your CRAC units duking it out cooling, humidifying and de-humidifying. What’s your plan to fix that?
• CRAC units placed around the perimeter of the room are less efficient than distributing them throughout the data center - Another recommendation based on research that gets ignored consistently.
• Humidity Matters - Actually, thermodynamics matter. But there is an important relationship between humidity and temperature you should seek to understand before you arbitrarily start adjusting your CRAC units.

After you’ve moved in, measure your energy costs and hold someone accountable. Every expert recommends this, but do you know how much energy you consumed last month and in what categories? Is anyone’s compensation tied to becoming more efficient?
Chuck Hollis presented some thoughtful suggestions for greening your data center several months ago. However, before you decide to expend the capital on virtualization, blade technology, or drive replacements, be certain you actually will retire the equipment you are supposedly replacing.

Finally, don’t confuse IT Capital spending with greening your data center. If you’re not measuring the energy you’re consuming in the first place and holding someone accountable for efficiency, perhaps the only greening happening is the transfer of money!

Data Center Relocation

Even as 365 Main takes the unprecedented step of publicly updating everyone on their root cause investigation of the generator failures that darkened many well-known web sites, will the lessons learned become lessons remembered? Take this short quiz for your own organization:

1. Are your DNS servers geographically dispersed? If all of your DNS servers go down with your other servers, then you will not be able to react and re-point critical functions to operational servers. Dispersing your DNS is simple to do and yet many organizations have not done even that.

2. Do you put too much faith in your utility’s past history? Like the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Many things outside their control can and do interrupt power.

3. Do you believe that generator and UPS testing are actually done under real-world conditions? The real story is that generators are manually started and tested and UPS systems are put into bypass mode. When actual events cause these systems to engage, unexpected things do happen.

When we move data centers, we often encounter single points of service delivery that must be corrected to move the data center while not affecting the customer’s service. You don’t need to move a data center to understand the value of geographic diversity. You also don’t need to brute force the problem by duplicating everything you have somewhere else.

The real question is will you act before an event costs you money?

Data Center Relocation