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

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

There are a number of firms who specialize in data center design and do a great job. Unfortunately, there are many more who continue to design and build data centers with glaring problems. Having to move organizations into these brand new but defficient data centers makes me question if the designers have ever reconciled their designs with real, operational data centers?

Raised Floor or Not? Raised floor isn’t dead or even wounded. Just make sure the depth of the raised floor is adequate to provide the plenum of air volume you need. Also be certain that conduit and chilled water isn’t indiscriminately placed blocking airflow and underfloor paths. Use the correct raised floor for the job and familiarize yourself with zinc wiskers before approving the floor type. If you decide to go without raised floor for a large space, be certain you’ve properly accounted for the implications of that decision.

Power: Under or Over? Understand the issues of both methods. Run power from PDU (Power Distribution Units) in conduit to avoid EMI (Electro Magnetic Interference) issues even if you run it overhead.

Hot and Cold Aisles Matter. Ask to see the designer’s modeling of the data center’s hot and cold aisles. I’m guessing you’ll be met with blank stares. Most just plunk down the CRAC (Computer Room Air Conditioners) units around the perimeter of the data center and have no idea how the data center will perform with respect to static air pressure and cooling.

Don’t waste your expensive raised floor ! Not everything belongs on the raised floor. UPS systems with batteries belong in their own room. Putting them on the raised floor wastes expensive square footage.

The Patching Dilemma. Most data center designs do not properly incorporate the operational need for patching both fiber and copper in the data center. At the time of the design, the fiber and copper counts per cabinet are often unknown. As a result, the design typically provides some overhead ladder rack and the new owner is left to string patch cables from cabinet to cabinet. You’ll likely need to add fiber tray, backbone fiber and copper, and central patching fields to the design.

Grounding. A proper design will have a drawing describing all aspects of grounding in the data center. Don’t leave this up to electricians during the building phase.

Data Center Relocation

Let’s stipulate that many experts can help you with a site selection for your data center. Further, you can search for checklists and overviews and devise your own methodology. In case that is all you are looking for, here’s an overview from Ron Hughes.

But before you start, what do you really need to know?

The end result of your site selection will be a real estate transaction. You will end up buying or leasing and in all likelihood you’ll also have to manage a construction project in a time-constrained window.

1. Remember that data center site selection is but one process in a chain of events that has to succeed. Leave enough time for the other events (like construction). It’s not unusual for organizations to take several years for site selection and then expect to build their data center in a few months.

2. Site selections done clumsily will cost your company money. Your entire team from outside technical experts to outside attorneys to local help should all be under Non Disclosure Agreements. Your own internal team should have strict guidelines regarding disclosures.

3. Verify everything independently. From fiber paths to power substations, failure to verify will be costly.

4. Ignorance of local regulation can doom the site. Are you allowed to run your planned diesel generator? Is aesthetic or noise screening required? Can you put equipment on the roof?

5. Know when to use your leverage. Negotiating for favorable signage or tenant finish allowances or even local incentives at the wrong time can cost both money and reputation. Not knowing what you can negotiate is equally costly.

Our help and knowledge can benefit your team right from the beginning. Give us an opportunity to make your entire relocation process successful…starting before the datacenter site selection.

####

Corporate Relocations, Data Center Checklist, Data Center Relocation

The searching comes in many forms from a sample data center WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) to a relocation move checklist, to a project plan for data center relocation, to a search for typical relocation costs. After some frustrating searching for the elusive data center move checklist, you may find yourself reading this post.

Since every move is different, we build these plans after a discovery process with our customers. They, in turn, own those project plans and we don’t post them.

If you are trying to build a plan from the bottom up, generally you will need at least these common project elements in addition to your unique requirements:

1. External Connectivity
   a. data
   b. voice
   c. wireless
2. Internal Connectivity
   a. by location if multiple sites are involved
3. Construction time line (if your destination site is being built)
4. Move elements by phase
   a. pre-move
   b. teardown
   c. transit
   d. arrival
   e. re-assembly
5. Test and Validation
6. Post-Move decommissioning

Request our free data center moving guide to give you a jump start with your planning.

Should you need help at any phase of your move, let us earn your business.

Do you have questions about moving your data center? You can e-mail Blaine Berger directly at blaine@e-oasis.com .

Data Center Relocation

While every data center move has unique challenges at every phase, some common factors are at work undermining the move’s success. Awareness and action can mean the difference in the success or failure of your move. Let’s explore a few of them.

1. No Common Sense of Urgency (or No Urgency at all !)
2. The Accelerating Schedule Effect
3. Underestimating Coordination Issues
4. Failure to Contractually Obligate Vendors
5. Failure to Focus on equally critical post-move issues
6. Constructing a Plan where EVERYTHING has to go right

No Common Sense of Urgency (or No Urgency at all !)

A sense of urgency is essential in an organization that is preparing for a major move. Often you will find that there is no shared sense of urgency or worse…no urgency at all. Without this sense of urgency, decisions are deferred, in-fighting is allowed to continue, and priorities are not properly set to make the move successful.

The Accelerating Schedule Effect

An interesting thing happens the closer you get to your move date. The schedule appears to accelerate towards your milestones. In other words, the closer you get…the less hours in the day you have and fewer resources are available. When you review your schedule, pay particular attention to those final months with an eye toward building contingency buffers and resource alternatives.

Underestimating Coordination Issues

While the technical challenges are not small, neither is the coordination required across your organization. Plan for the coordination required with your customers, your vendors, your internal staff, your executive team, and your end-users. You wouldn’t be the first organization that failed to coordinate with their finance staff and missed payroll, vendor payments, and customer invoices due to an ill-timed move.

Failure to Contractually Obligate Vendors

Simply, if you need a vendor to perform a move-related service (like moving your Storage Area Network), then don’t leave that to a handshake. Get a statement of work that outlines the schedule and deliverables so that your key Vendors are Contractually on-board.

Failure to Focus on equally critical post-move issues

These can be different for each organization, but post-move employee retention and de-commissioning of unneeded services are two that rise to the top of most post-relocation plans.

Constructing a Plan where EVERYTHING has to go right

Virtually all move project plans suffer from this mistake. Review your plan with a qualified professional (like us) to ensure that key risk areas and contingencies are address.

Data Center Relocation

Not a day goes by without a inquiry for a quick estimate for moving a data center. After a futile search with Google looking for a benchmark for a data center per square foot moving cost metric, I often get that urgent request for help.

Too often, there is not enough time to complete a moving cost estimate with any degree of accuracy. These early estimates are prone to assumption errors, a lack of understanding regarding options that affect costs, and the desire to “keep it quiet” within the organization…meaning asking clarifying questions are often not possible.

From the perspective of the decision-maker, how do you progress through a data center moving exercise without having some idea of the costs?

You’re not prepared for an engineering exercise and you just want some idea of the relocation costs. At least at the beginning. Then, your project gathers steam, money is allocated, and you can’t remember where you got all the great estimates from your Internet searches. And that’s the good news.

The bad news is that major elements seem to be missing, or the costs estimated don’t match the real world. In other words, your assumption errors cost your organization real money.

Ask anyway. We won’t be able to give you the average cost for a data center relocation, but we’ll try and understand your project and give you the early estimate you seek.

In return, give us the opportunity to help you avoid costly mistakes with our data center move services when the budgetary crisis passes.

Data Center Relocation

Data Center moves are expensive. Many equipment vendors use a strategy that strikes fear, uncertainty, and doubt when it comes time to move your equipment. They void your support contracts and warranties if you don’t use them to move the equipment. Multiply that by the different vendors represented in your data center and you’ve got quite an economic problem on your hands.

Who can sort through the maze of options? Who would you trust to be the Overall Move Project Manager to reign in these equipment vendors?

An Independent Company like ours strikes fear in the hearts of all of these equipment vendors because they can no longer exploit their presence in your data center to influence your move decisions.

We’re changing this industry one move at a time. Let us earn your relocation business. Our independence and skill will help you become the hero of your move.

Data Center Relocation