IT Room Migration Bundle

The migration of any IT room is possibly one of the highest risk and most complex IT projects. The IT room migration bundle will bring a wealth of experience, underpinned by a proven migration method and a portfolio of reusable assets, which would help to minimize risk, reduce costs, reduce delivery timescales and maximize the potential of a smooth and successful migration.

Overview

For performing the IT room migration, a standard method can be applied. The method delivers cost-effective application, data and infrastructure migrations and avoids unplanned outages. It consist of five phases:

  • Planning and Control
  • Discovery and Design
  • Build and Test
  • Rehearse and Migration
  • Handover and Closure

Within the method, each of the five stages outlined above, has a series of pre-defined activities. In each activity, there are a series of pre-defined associated tasks and outputs.

Planning and Control

It recognizes that to get it right first time, IT room migrations recommends significant and normally dedicated resources. It must be their core mission, not just a side project. Aiming to ensure everyone involved has a clear understanding of the project objectives from beginning to end is crucial, as is clear and strong project and technical management and governance.

Discovery and Design

With any migration, a single version of the truth should be the goal for all baseline data: hardware, software, application information, interfaces, middleware, shared services and support. The described model has been specifically designed for the entire lifecycle of an IT room migration

Once a trusted discovery baseline has been established, it is maintained throughout the migration to enable discovery management information to be extracted and detailed planning to commence.

There are many aspects to target design, ranging from the core infrastructure, through to disaster recovery and the target operating model. In addition, for the duration of the migration, the migration architecture is vital.

A migration architecture is the technology, method, process and procedures chosen to enable the migration of the applications and data, however, there are many factors shaping the detailed plan, either enablers or constraints.

Build and Test

Build is the process that establishes the technology foundations for the migration, including:

  • Datacenter fabric – buildings, halls, partitions, cages, space, power and cooling.
  • Physical equipment – racking, servers, storage, structured network cabling, fibers, power distribution and outlets.
  • Production WAN and target datacenter LAN – WAN and Internet connections, LAN switches, security stacks – firewalls/DMZs/appliances.
  • Tooling and automation – for the migration of images and data.

Testing span the entire lifecycle of the migration and it is recommended to use a risk based testing approach for migrations. The benefits of a risk based testing approach are that:

  • It confirms the testing effort by identifying where the majority of risks lie in systems and prioritizing those tests
  • It focuses on what really matters; to both business and operations
  • It focuses on the points of change

Rehearse and Migration

In the run up to a migration event, it is critical to perform a rehearsal aiming to ensure that the infrastructure, the people and the migration procedures and work instructions are ready. Just like any major performance, rehearsals are key to the overall success.

This series will provide several tools and techniques for managing migration events that make sure everyone understands their role, the critical path and associated activities.

Handover and Closure

Final handover and support, along with decommissioning the remaining infrastructure are all critical tasks.