Why Data Center Migrations Fail, and How to Reduce the Risk

They say that moving is the third most stressful event in life, following death and divorce. If the millions of Americans who will move their households this year are feeling the pinch, just imagine the pressure on IT managers who must oversee the relocation of corporate data center facilities.

Coordinating the move of servers, storage subsystems, and LAN and WAN infrastructures is a monumental task that must be approached with the strategic precision of a military campaign. Today’s complex IT environments, coupled with the “always on” nature of today’s mission-critical systems, create a high risk of failure. On top of that, harried IT managers must try to manage the migration while keeping up with day-to-day tasks.

For that reason, it often makes sense to partner with an IT provider with the knowledge and expertise to handle a data center migration project. Here are some key reasons why data center moves fail, and how DeSeMa can help overcome them.

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Lack of Global Oversight

Many organizations launch data center migration projects without insight into all details of the effort. IT managers seldom have deep expertise in every area of the data center environment, and operational teams are often siloed. With limited understanding of the interplay between various IT resources and a lack of effective coordination, problems are bound to arise.

Global oversight is not the same as project management. Project managers may effectively coordinate all activities and work around unexpected problems and delays. However, project managers typically aren’t responsible for the technical accuracy of the initiative.

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Insufficient Skill Sets

Closely related to the lack of global oversight is the lack of sufficient skill sets. IT staff may have the specific skills needed to do their jobs, but lack a strong understanding of other related elements of the environment. Given their heavy workloads, they also lack the time to expand their knowledge to other technology solutions. As a result, they may not be aware of potential problems, and fail to identify specific tasks that must be performed to ensure success.

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Failure to Assess the Environment

During the project’s discovery phase, IT teams should perform a thorough, rack-by-rack assessment of the environment, and document every device and its associated applications. It’s especially important to identify dependencies that could cause cascading failures. IT teams that shortcut this step face greater risk of serious problems.

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Overbroad Project Scope

A data center move might seem like the ideal time to complete needed equipment upgrades. After all, you’re taking down the environment — why not replace storage platforms, firewalls and other gear at the same time?

There’s nothing wrong with this in theory, but trying to do too much at once can be a recipe for failure. Each change comes with potential problems that can impact other aspects of the IT environment. When multiple changes are made simultaneously, these problems quickly multiply, and it can be difficult to identify the root causes.

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How DeSeMa Can Help

DeSeMa has helped many organizations complete data center migrations, infrastructure upgrades and cloud migrations with no loss of system availability. Our senior engineers have a deep understanding of the IT environment and the interdependencies that can cause problems. This enables us to plan and execute migrations with high levels of precision.

Organizations also call us to get them back up and running after a failed data center migration. Our team is adept at isolating and solving problems, but doesn’t it make more sense to engage us from the outset? We can help ensure the success of your data center migration and minimize the risk of business-crippling downtime.