As we say over and over, Data Center Migrations are hard.  Yet, risk can be mitigated with a proven methodology and some common sense steps.  Based upon our successes, the below points illustrate the 10 Essential Steps to a Successful Data Center Migration. 

1. Appoint an experienced Project Leader (other than the project sponsor) and team lead(s) who has/have previous experience with this type of project.
   • Assign a Resource to serve as the QA/Review Role for each team.
   • Assign a resource as the vendor liaison in order to leverage Vendor resources and expertise.
2. Manage and control scope by clearly articulating what will be migrated via a server inventory list. 
3. Consider Staff Augmentation to fill the experience/technology gap.
4. Produce key templates and documents that will manage and direct the overall execution:
   • Project Charter and Definition Document(s)
   • Budget, Timeline, Human Resource and Technical Design/Plans
   • Master Program Schedule, Project Schedule (timeline) 
   • Detailed Project Schedule for Go-Live Event
   • Master Issue and Risk Log
   • Executive Dashboard; Team and Individual Status Reporting 
   • System Performance Reports 
   • Data Validation Reports, User Acceptance, Functional, System, Integration Testing Results
   • Fall Back Plans
   • Lessons Learned 
5. Follow an established and proven methodology for data migration.  Identify and require processes and procedures to be consistently followed to Ensure success. 
6. Establish a governance model and an integrated toolset to ensure successful and consistent collaboration across the enterprise.  Actively and consistently manage stakeholders. 
7. Reduce migration risk by migrating from steady-state to steady-state versus steady-state to desired-state of the new data center.
8. Perform a pre-transition server validation to ensure that current problems are not propagated in the migration effort. 
9. Plan and organize testing efforts to include vendors as well as internal/external clients to ensure that changes as a result of the data center migration do not adversely affect day-to-day operational functionality. 
10. Avoid operational outages by communicating hardware and network changes (IP, DNS and Firewall changes) to internal/external clients as well as 3rd party entities.