Every data center move is unique and every move is important to us. We’ve updated our popular data center moving guide for 2011. Enter your e-mail address in the form on your right to receive this 28 page guide.

E-Oasis Wants to Earn Your Business

While many white papers are written carefully to disclose very little information, ours are different. Make no mistake – we do want to earn your business  by planning your data center move. However, we think the best way to do that is to explain the anatomy of a data center move including common mistakes to avoid.

This 2011 edition of the data center move guide contains:

• Is Your Move Feasible?
• Anatomy of a Move
  • How Much Is This Move Going to Cost?
  • Assumption Errors Cost Money
  • Example Data Center Move Categories
  • Site Selection
  • Pre-Move Planning
  • Teardown
  • Transit
  • Arrival
  • Re-Assembly
  • Post-Move
• Top Mistakes to Avoid
• Virtualization and Data Center Moving
• Next Steps

Get your guide by providing your e-mail address in the sidebar on your right.

Why do we require a valid E-Mail address?

We want to communicate with you about your data center moving project.  You can browse our site to learn about data center moving without providing your e-mail. We encourage you to do that now. When you are ready, request our Free Data Center Moving Guide by providing a valid e-mail address.

Your e-mail address always remains private.

Survive or Thrive?

Data center relocations are major projects. But just surviving the relocation may prove to be the wrong strategy. Our relocation planning will save you money, help you avoid costly and potentially embarrassing mistakes, and minimize the disruption to your business.

Take a tour if you are a first-time visitor to learn more about data center moving.

We move data centers.

Put our systematic methodology for planning and moving a data center to work for you. We  make you the Superhero of your move.

• Planning – Helping you avoid costly mistakes with our data center move playbook.
• Execution – Keeping the data center move on-track.
• Post-Move Support – Critically important post-move services ensures success.

Give us a call. We’re ready when you are.

You can contact Paul Ely, Technical Operations Director, toll free at 1-877-485-1115 X101 with your data center moving requirements.

Corporate Relocations, Data Center Relocation, Data Center Relocation Checklist, Data Center Site Selection, Executive's Guide

Having help moving your data center can free your scarce resources — if you know what to look for.

The value of planning and executing a data center relocation is easy to see.  Done well, customers and staff alike are informed, downtime is minimized, and your company avoids negative press.   Finding a firm that can deliver what you need when you’re unsure of what you need can be both frustrating and challenging.  Here are five factors to help you navigate the waters:

1. Understand the data center moving process first
2. Work with someone who can be independent and project manage multiple vendors
3. Make some initial decisions about the destination, key milestones, and expected downtime before contacting vendors
4. Understand the urgency. Don’t spend all of your time with an RFP (Request for Proposal) process and leave little time to plan and accomplish the move. Sometimes, an RFP is unnecessary and doesn’t produce the expected competitive cost-savings most expect.
5. Select someone who has a successful track record and can adapt to inevitable changes in the data center moving plan

Our resources on this site can help you understand the data center moving process from start to finish. Starting early is the best way to ensure your success because unrealistic deadlines drive up costs and expose your organization to more risk.  Give us a call to discuss your data center relocation project.

Corporate Relocations, Data Center Relocation, Data Center Relocation Checklist, Data Center Site Selection

Our Data Center Moving Blog helps you learn more about data center moving. The posts to this site can be found by category:

• Data Center Moving Checklist
• Data Center Relocation
• Data Center Site Selection
• Corporate Relocations

The Sitemap below shows all of the topics on this site. Subscribe to Blog updates via e-mail on the form on the right or follow us on Twitter at @datacentermove.

Jump Start Your Learning with These Popular Posts

I’ve selected some of our most popular topics to get you up to speed quickly:

• Where do you find the elusive data center move checklist?
• How do you calculate moving expenses for data center relocations?
• How do you write a data center relocation statement of work (SOW)?
• What do you need to know about data center site selection?
• What are the common factors that undermine almost every data center move?

Learn About Data Center Relocation Services to help you Succeed:

Let us Earn your Business. Here’s how to Contact Us:

• E-Mail: urgent@e-oasis.com (Let us know your urgent need)
• Phone: 303-485-1115 (Leave us a voicemail anytime with your contact information)
• Follow @datacentermove on Twitter

We welcome all your questions about Data Center Moving. We’re ready when you are. Give us a call.

SiteMap

Corporate Relocations, Data Center Relocation, Data Center Relocation Checklist, Data Center Site Selection

Every data center move is unique and every move is important to us. We’ve updated our popular data center moving guide for 2009 doubling its size to over 20 pages.

E-Oasis Wants to Earn Your Business
While many white papers are written carefully to disclose very little information, ours are different. Make no mistake – we do want to earn your business  by planning your data center move. However, we think the best way to do that is to explain the anatomy of a data center move including common mistakes to avoid.

This 2009 edition of the data center move guide contains:

• Is Your Move Feasible?
• Anatomy of a Move
• Budgeting
• Site Selection
• Pre-Move Planning
• Teardown
• Transit
• Arrival
• Re-Assembly
• Post-Move
• Top Mistakes to Avoid

Get your guide by providing your e-mail address in the sidebar on your right.

Survive or Thrive?

Data center relocations are major projects. But just surviving the relocation may prove to be the wrong strategy. Our relocation planning will save you money, help you avoid costly and potentially embarassing mistakes, and minimize the disruption to your business.

Check our our blog-at-a-glance feature if you’re new to this site to learn more about data center moving.

We move data centers.

Put our systematic methodology for planning and moving a data center to work for you. We  make you the Super Hero of your move.

• Planning – Helping you avoid costly mistakes with our data center move playbook.
• Execution – Keeping the data center move on-track.
• Post-Move Support – Critically important post-move services ensures success.

Give us a call. We’re ready when you are.

Corporate Relocations, Data Center Relocation, Data Center Relocation Checklist, Data Center Site Selection

That’s the funny thing. It’s not a secret. John Rath put together a great piece on why the Midwest could become a data center magnet. It’s a good read. Especially for economic development organizations struggling to differentiate their areas.

How many of these factors do you have? How well do you stack up against the Midwest?

1. Reliable and inexpensive power
2. Renewable energy sources
3. Supportive social and business environments
4. Natural disaster avoidance
5. Network connectivity options

Don’t forget about our four point action plan for Regional Economic Development Agencies:

1. Package Your Infrastructure – Power, Fiber, and Transportation needs to be readily available to the advance teams for evaluation.
2. Assess Your Available Inventory for Data Center Readiness – Your region can be quickly eliminated because you can’t provide an inventory of available properties that answer fundamental data center questions. Items such as existing data center raised floor height, generators, proximity to fiber paths, are but a few of the items a relocation team wants to know. Most commercial listing agents have no idea what type of data center space exists in their inventories.
3. Pre-form a Welcome Team – Advance evaluation teams get on airplanes to have a look. You can increase your odds with a multi-disciplinary Welcome Team to guide their evaluators and answer their questions. If you stuff this team with local politicos and Realtors, you’re missing an opportunity to put technical experts in front of the advance relocation evaluation teams.
4. Don’t Just Sit There – You can build all the FAQ pages, marketing collateral, and databases you want, but assuming a corporate relocation team is going to find you is a bad bet. Seek creative ways to let others know about your area including us. Send your information to dcmove@e-oasis.com. Also consider industry-specific conferences and trade shows to highlight your area.

Corporate Relocations, Data Center Site Selection

Most Data Center moves begin with the C-Level suite typically with a seemingly simple question: “How much is it going to cost us to move our data center?”

In the scramble to answer that question, a less-than-scientific process begins that often jeopardizes most data center moves before they begin.

• Data Center Move Planning is more important than getting a quick cost estimate. Before you send your staff off to search the Internet for the elusive data center move project plan, step back and do some planning yourself.
• Keeping the move confidential preserves many options including the ability to assemble advance teams to check out data center locations without jeopardizing your negotiating leverage.
• Expecting your Information Technology (IT) staff to know how to move a Data Center properly is unrealistic as most have never completed the task. Get educated with our Data Center Move Guide available in right-hand sidebar.
• Understand that your Data Center Relocation is unique and requires more than a generic data center move checklist you found on the web. Allow us to earn your business and make you the Superhero of your move.
• Be realistic about time-frames. Data Center Moves of size and complexity take 12 months or more to plan and execute properly. We can help you with a realistic time-line with the right services at the right time.

You reason that Google has rescued you before and you search harder to locate elements of your relocation plan. But when you come up short, then what?

• Where do you find the elusive data center move checklist?
• How do you calculate moving expenses for data center relocations?
• How do you write a data center relocation statement of work (SOW)?
• What do you need to know about data center site selection?
• What are the common factors that undermine almost every data center move?

It costs nothing to call us at 1-877-485-1115 to discuss your unique move. We’re ready when you are.

Corporate Relocations, Data Center Relocation, Data Center Relocation Checklist, Data Center Site Selection, Executive's Guide

It’s well established that large data centers are seeking cheap power. That criteria can lead to locations where substation improvements are required to provide the redundant power paths that are a key criteria of a modern data center. From a very basic perspective, power should enter the site from different substations following route diversity. Each substation should be sized to handle the entire projected load.

Practically, however, the utility company or the customer may need to engage the services of Power Engineers who specialize in distribution systems and substation design to optimize for the location and to satisfy specific utility requirements.

The intersection of cheap power, available fiber capacity, and low real estate costs has been the recipe for data center site selection. John Rath makes an important observation that “Businesses large and small want their infrastructure in close proximity to their business offices” (read more from John’s data center site selection paper).

This means that data centers will continue to be opened in areas that require upgraded electrical infrastructure. This could range from simple increases in electrical service to full blown re-engineering of the utility feeds that service the desired site.

Modern data centers require the appropriate electrical infrastrucutre of capacity and route diversity to serve their desired purpose.

Data Center Relocation, Data Center Relocation Checklist, Data Center Site Selection

Wyoming earmarked $1 billion in 2004 to improve power transmission capacity with four projects already underway as a result. Texas also understands the critical need to invest in the transmission grid and is proceeding with plans to put almost $5 billion to work to capitalize on power transmission originating from wind farms.

It’s not as sexy as building a mega-datacenter, but both States stand to benefit nicely in the long term by improving their power grids. It could also touch off a decades-long arms race to improve the capacity of power grids in key areas as these projects require planning and lead-time to complete.

Data center site selection criteria that seek to be located closer to the power generation source could be impacted as these projects approach completion.

Track the investment in the power grid infrastructure and you’ve got a five year window into the potential location of many power-hungry facilities — data centers included.

Wyoming and Texas enjoy high untapped wind energy potential and both realize the importance of getting that engergy on the power grid by investing in that infrastructure.

Data Center Site Selection

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is a rigorous approach to ensuring your business can continue to operate in the event of an unplanned outage. Despite all the attention to BCP, the lesson of Geographic Diversity continues to be a lesson learned but a lesson not remembered.

A transformer explosion at hosting company, The Planet in Houston,  on May 31, 2008 forced the company to take the entire facility offline until tests could be completed to allow the generators to supply power. This meant 9,000 servers were without power.

It simply is no longer sufficient to utilize a single location for your operations even if you have made that single location highly available.

If you can remember only one lesson in Geographic Diversity, remember to diversify your DNS at another location.

Attention to business resumption would lead you to conclude you need to do more than just provide for DNS diversity. Colorado is uniquely positioned to provide data centers that are geographically diverse from most locations in North America. While the debate continues about the required separation between data centers, consider there are 9,000 servers without power at a Houston data center. If some of them had geographic diversity even a few miles away, those businesses could have resumed their operations.

Data Center Relocation, Data Center Site Selection

As reported by Rich Miller at DataCenterKnowlege, forward-thinking Regional Economic Development Agencies are focusing on attracting large data center projects. The debate continues on the real economic impact after accounting for tax incentives and infrastructure improvements given the relatively small amount of jobs these large footprint data centers create. What many economic development agencies may not realize is that there are many more data center-related jobs at stake than the mega-projects most often reported in the media.

We move data centers of all sizes. Most data center moves are a result of a larger corporate relocation project which means jobs of many types will follow the data center move…not just the jobs to keep the data center running. What can economic development agencies do to highlight their region’s strengths?

1. Package Your Infrastructure – Power, Fiber, and Transportation needs to be readily available to the advance teams for evaluation.
2. Assess Your Available Inventory for Data Center Readiness – Your region can be quickly eliminated because you can’t provide an inventory of available properties that answer fundamental data center questions. Items such as existing data center raised floor height, generators, proximity to fiber paths, are but a few of the items a relocation team wants to know. Most commercial listing agents have no idea what type of data center space exists in their inventories.
3. Pre-form a Welcome Team – Advance evaluation teams get on airplanes to have a look. You can increase your odds with a multi-disciplinary Welcome Team to guide their evaluators and answer their questions. If you stuff this team with local politicos and Realtors, you’re missing an opportunity to put technical experts in front of the advance relocation evaluation teams.
4. Don’t Just Sit There – You can build all the FAQ pages, marketing collateral, and databases you want, but assuming a corporate relocation team is going to find you is a bad bet. Seek creative ways to let others know about your area including us. Send your information to dcmove@e-oasis.com. Also consider industry-specific conferences and trade shows to highlight your area.

Contact us to inquire about how we can help you with your Regional Economic Development efforts related to data center moves. We have a number of innovative services that can help you understand and attract organizations who relocate their data centers.

Corporate Relocations, Data Center Relocation, Data Center Site Selection