Data Center Migration

5 Steps to Migration Success

Step 1: Performance Readiness Assessment

Every Forsythe data center migration begins with a thorough inventory of your existing infrastructure, which we can then analyze and use to make recommendations for optimizing your environment. Performing a best practices check-up for infrastructure management provides a baseline of the organization’s readiness to undertake this initiative. Our objective is to evaluate the accuracy and completeness of the processes, procedures and documentation.

Focus areas include:

• Support Structure
• Service Level Agreements
• Documentation
• Asset Management
• Maintenance Contracts
• Financial Management
• Change Control
• Architecture
• Capacity Planning
• Performance Management
• Monitoring and Management
• Business Initiatives
• Stakeholder Management
• Resource Availability
• Industry Regulations
• Logistics
• Project Timeline
• Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Plans

STEP 2 – Evaluate the Environment

This phase involves gathering, combining and correlating information about assets and their use in support of the business. Analogous to a disaster recovery plan, this step baselines the environment and begins the process of asset classification.

Forsythe helps you identify each asset and develops a portfolio of information regarding its use and interrelationship to the whole business. The end-product of this phase is the development of your asset repository that reflects the current inventory, technical and business interrelationships, and supporting asset lifecycle information.

STEP 3 – Design, Validate and Plan Your Project

Building upon your assessment, each asset will now be correlated to the business function it supports. Forsythe will help you define and separate your assets into specific categories called “migration groups.” Each migration group represents a consolidated collection of assets that support a key business initiative or IT function. Forsythe will analyze your migration groups for their criticality to business and rank them in prioritized order. The result of this stage will provide you with a relocation methodology tailored to the needs of your business. Forsythe will also help you develop a detailed task plan, timeline, budget, and resource and contingency plans during this phase of your project.

STEP 4 – Implement the Plan

Each stakeholder will understand his or her role and assigned task(s). Forsythe will help you coordinate all of your activities, track and communicate your progress and perform problem management. Successes and failures will be documented and utilized post-relocation to improve the process for subsequent events. Forsythe places a continual emphasis on improvement. We will always be looking for ways to improve your processes and make your relocation more efficient.

STEP 5 – Manage the Post-Relocation Environment

Once you have completed your data center relocation, you will need to take one more step—the incorporation of knowledge, updated processes, procedures and documentation into the normal support structure of your IT infrastructure—and Forsythe experts can help. Quickly incorporating this information so you can implement a process will achieve greater long-term results and success.