data center migration
Challenge
- Migrate 400 devices, 250 applications to a new data center
- Limited virtualization in the environment
- NO business impact
- Tight, 10-month, schedule
- Constrained client resources
The Cavan Solution
- Complete inventory of existing data center equipment
- Disposition analysis
- Develop migration strategy
- Develop plan & move groups
- Identify move vendors
- Manage all resources
- Execute successful migration over 5 phases.
Benefits & Results
- Fully migrated environment with zero impact to the business
- Project complete within published schedule
- Project competed under budget
The Client
A global pharmaceutical partner to drug developers and medical device manufacturers looking to bring innovative new products to market. They provide a wide range of Phase IV trials that incorporate clinical study design, bioanalytics, peri-approval and post-marketing services.
Business Challenge
The client had recently constructed and commissioned a new 6000 square foot high-availability data center and was anxious to migrate their systems and services from the current location.
Their environment included a mixture of production and development systems, totaling over 400 devices. The client's tolerance for business risk was minimal, and they mandated that the migration event would have zero impact on business operations. This stance presented a challenge to us in the planning process as their applications and storage environment were not configured or architected to facilitate a smooth data migration. To add to the complexity, the schedule for the migration effort was 10 months end to end, because the old facility needed to be vacated due to lease expirations.
In addition, the client had several other major IT initiatives running concurrent with the migration project, seriously constraining the available IT resources.
The Cavan Solution
Cavan's process for large-scale data center migration follows a consistent methodology that included:
- Inventory of Data Center systems
- Disposition analysis on inventory
- Migration Strategy Development
- Migration Plan Development
- Migration Execution
After completing the inventory and disposition process, our team worked closely with the IT applications development and support team to develop a complete applications map showing up stream and down-stream dependencies. The applications map served as a foundation for developing applications groups or move groups.
Developing their application groups was closely coordinated with business unit representatives so that we understood their concerns, blackout dates, maintenance windows and other constraints that impact the planning, scheduling and execution processes.
In addition, our in-depth review of the client's server and storage architecture dictated the quantity of seed equipment needed in the new facility, bandwidth requirements and the role of specialized vendor resources. The end result was a well defined Migration Strategy that captured the quantity of move groups, schedule, resources and cost.
The planning process was equally involved and culminated in developing Playbooks for each discrete move event.
Cavan managed the entire migration event through completion, including the evaluation and selection of qualified move vendors, management if internal IT resources, coordination of vendor resources, on-site presence during move events and follow-up review of each event. We used a variety of tools and techniques to manage the communication and information flow including SharePoint, Web conferences and face to face meetings. We also delivered a monthly Executive Status update to ensure the client's leadership team was fully briefed on progress and developments.
Results
The project concluded with the successful migration of all production and development systems to the new data center facility. The business experienced no impact to service and, in fact, was largely unaware of the timing, duration or composition of the move events. The project was completed on time and under budget.
