Relocating Another Data Centre

I recently took part in another data centre relocation project. I was one of a number of project managers moving some of the servers in a 1,300 server data centre. I moved about 200, and decommissioned another 50. I was directly planning and executing moves, so my role was different from on my previous project. It was good to experience a move from another position.

The project was successful in the end. I have to say that there were a number of lessons learned, which goes to prove that no many how many times you do something, there's always something more to learn.

Unlike my previous experiences, there were three major organizations working together on this relocation: the customer and two IT service providers to the customer. All organizations had good, dedicated, capable people, but we all had, at a minimum, a couple of reporting paths. That in itself was enough to add complication and effort to the project.

The senior project manager identified this right from the start and he made lots of good tries to compensate and mitigate for it. We did a number of sessions to get everyone on the same page with respect to methodology. Our core team acted as a cohesive team and we all adhered to the methodology. And in fact, across the project I think it's safe to say that the front line people did as much as they could to push toward to project goals.

Despite our best efforts, we all, across the three organizations, had to devote significant efforts to satisfy our own organization's needs. It's worth noting that much of this is simply necessary -- organizational governance is a big issue in the modern economy, and appearing to have management control is an business reality.

So if you're planning a relocation, take a look at the organizational structures that will be involved, and take them into account when planning your data centre relocation project.