R&M releases Colocation Migration Handbook

R&M is releasing a practical guide to successful colocation migration for enterprise data centers. This is aimed at helping users gain insight into planning, physical infrastructure design specifications, and strategy aspects that need to be considered before effective migration into a colocation data center may take place. Insufficient attention to these steps may negatively impact the possible benefits of a colocation data center relocation. The handbook is intended for CIOs, Data Center Managers, IT and Facility Managers.

As a dedicated partner and trusted advisor for networks all over the world, R&M knows the best approaches to deploying colocation data center infrastructure and we are happy to share this knowledge. “Outsourcing data center operations to a purpose-built data center can bring operators greater efficiency, reliability and security,” explains Dr. Thomas Wellinger, R&M Market Manager Data Center. “It can also help reduce costs and bring opportunities to connect with an ecosystem featuring other relevant service providers and partners. Getting the data center migration right makes sure you avoid unplanned downtime and unnecessary costs and make informed issues about key topics such as security, scalability and redundancy. Our seven-step guide to planning this type of move helps the handbook’s target audience in key areas and minimizes business disruption“.

The handbook is divided into seven chapters that cover the following topics:

• Understanding the Requirements and Planning the Project: this looks at organizing stakeholders and specifying IT requirements
• Asset and Application Inventory: working out the scope, size and timing of the migration, deployment needs, and inventory automation.
• Setting the framework and releasing an RFP: create a request for proposal to be sent to the prospective colocation data centers.
• Planning New Infrastructure: reviewing colocation floor space/white space and architecture and designing links.
• Pre-Migration Tasks: creating a day-to-day schedule for migration team representatives, including all installation and configuration preparations.
• Initial migration: migration planning and the actual migration of the infrastructure, data and applications.
• Post migration: everything from testing and auditing to adopting data center infrastructure management.