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.
- 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.
- Manage and control scope by clearly articulating what will be migrated via a server inventory list.
- Consider Staff Augmentation to fill the experience/technology gap.
- 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
- Follow an established and proven methodology for data migration. Identify and require processes and procedures to be consistently followed to Ensure success.
- Establish a governance model and an integrated toolset to ensure successful and consistent collaboration across the enterprise. Actively and consistently manage stakeholders.
- Reduce migration risk by migrating from steady-state to steady-state versus steady-state to desired-state of the new data center.
- Perform a pre-transition server validation to ensure that current problems are not propagated in the migration effort.
- 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.
- Avoid operational outages by communicating hardware and network changes (IP, DNS and Firewall changes) to internal/external clients as well as 3rd party entities.