Carry Out a Readiness Assessment
Performing a best-practices checkup for infrastructure management provides a baseline of the organization’s readiness to undertake this initiative. The objective is to evaluate the accuracy and completeness of processes, procedures and documentation.
Assess the Environment
This phase of the project involves gathering, combining and correlating information about assets and their use in support of the business. Analogous to a disaster recovery plan, this step baselines the environment and begins the process of asset classification. Each asset must be identified, and the portfolio of information regarding its use and interrelationship to the whole environment must be established and documented. The output of this phase is the asset repository that reflects the current inventory, technical and business interrelationships, and supporting asset life cycle information. Best practices include automated asset discovery and tracking, and the use of an industry standard repository such as a configuration management database (CMDB) that is capable of providing a comprehensive view of all aspects of each asset.
Design, Validate and Plan the Project
Building on the assessment, each asset must be correlated to the business function it supports. This step parallels the disaster recovery process of defining recovery groups; for the sake of this project, these groups will be referred to as “move groups.” Each move group represents a consolidated collection of assets that support a key business function or IT support function.
Each move group is analyzed for its criticality to the business and assigned a corresponding ranking. The result is a migration methodology tailored for each move group according to the service level agreement, risk mitigation capabilities that currently exist and an approved business case for additional investment required to support availability or limit risk during the migration.
The output of this project phase will be an overall project plan that includes detailed task plans, time budgets, and resource and contingency plans. A migration calendar should detail the timing of move events in relation to business initiatives and cycles. A communication plan and command center structure should be documented and validated with all stakeholders.
Implement the Plan
This phase is where the detailed analysis and planning pays off. Each stakeholder should understand his or her role and tasks. Decisions regarding contingencies and timelines have been established. The command center coordinates the activities, tracks and communicates progress, and performs problem management and escalation coordination. Successes and failures are documented and used after the migration to improve the process for subsequent events.
Manage the Environment Post-Migration
On completion of the data center migration, it is imperative to take one additional step: the incorporation of knowledge, updated processes, procedures and documentation into the normal support structure of the IT infrastructure. The migration project will have validated or generated current information about the IT infrastructure. As change is constant in information technology, this information will have a limited shelf life. In the normal course of business, these processes, procedures and documentation all too often become a low priority compared with the demands of the business on IT organizations. Quickly incorporating this information and implementing a process to continually refresh it will achieve a far greater long-term result than solely the migration of assets.
The Benefits of a Successful Data Center Migration
The benefits of carefully planned and executed data center migration go well beyond what meets the eye of the user or customer. Done correctly, the end result is not only a seamless transition for the business, but also the creation of a set of business continuity disciplines that can validate or provide groundwork for disaster recovery and business continuity planning—as well as IT and physical security, asset management, systems documentation, change control, operating standards and processes, capacity planning, maintenance and license management, service and operating level agreements, business alignment, and data center facility management.
In other words, successful data center migration can completely transform the overall operating environment—its processes, procedures, documentation and personnel—in a way that has significant, lasting benefits for an organization’s disaster recovery readiness as well as day-to-day operational efficiencies.