Server Relocations Company in Auckland?

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AndyR

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#157462 2-Dec-2014 11:23

Hey,
Strange place to ask but hopefully you guys can help.
I'm the lone IT Sys Admin for a company in Auckland which has experienced 300% growth in 12 months and we recently had to relocate offices fairly quickly to handle this. Because it happened so fast we couldn't move our on-premise server room (2x racks and a bunch of incoming customer lines) so we are currently running a site to site VPN between our old and new offices. Wasn't a problem as we had a long term lease until next year anyway.

Anyway, time has come to relocate the servers but I cannot find a company who specialise or have experience in IT Server Room relocations. I'm not comfortable having just any removal firm chucking rack servers in a van, and when I did this in the UK we had companies who loaded equipment into foam crates etc for the journey so thinking something like this.

Any suggestions? Would be for 1-2x racks of rack servers/UPS plus some smaller comms equipment in the Auckland CBD area.

Thanks!

JamesL

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#1186916 2-Dec-2014 11:31

We always used Fliway Transport for our data center moves, don't recall any damaged or non working items

Lias

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#1187020 2-Dec-2014 12:43

When a former employer of mine did this, they just did it themselves.

Brought lots of bubble wrap, hired a bunch of removal blankets, moved the delicate stuff themselves in multiple trips for redundancy in a van, and let generic movers move the less important stuff (racks themselves etc)

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup. Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

Zeon

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#1187087 2-Dec-2014 13:51

It will be more expensive but maybe get an IT company to do it?

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networkn

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#1187167 2-Dec-2014 15:23

Lias: When a former employer of mine did this, they just did it themselves.

Brought lots of bubble wrap, hired a bunch of removal blankets, moved the delicate stuff themselves in multiple trips for redundancy in a van, and let generic movers move the less important stuff (racks themselves etc)

This is how the vast majority of our clients do it with us.

wasabi2k

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#1187180 2-Dec-2014 15:36

Any SME IT company would probably do it for you, but you will pay for the privilege.

When I last run around a lot of transport places didn't want to go near it or would charge the earth. YMMV.

achieveit

21 posts

Geek

#1187539 2-Dec-2014 22:37

Maybe look at doing this yourself with the help of a friend.
Plan the move carefully etc. and all should go fine :)

You could hire an IT Company to do this for you, however as others have mentioned it could get costly. OR you could do most of the ground work, then contract someone in to help out.

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insane

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#1187543 2-Dec-2014 22:43

You'll want some help if you're going to shift things yourself. The most I've shifted by myself is around 15U, and you'll be amazed how tired you get racking and stacking. If you have a large UPS you're in for some fun.

Start by labeling ALL your cables on both ends, one label stating which device and port it's going into, the other label stating which switch port it's plugged into. Will make re-cabling much much easier!

michaelmurfy

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#1187566 2-Dec-2014 23:10

Why not just hire a few racks in a Datacentre and move your stuff there? The idea being it'll help with Disaster Recovery and mean you shouldn't have to move / can expand easier if needed, I also think there is the potential for quite a few of your servers to be virtualized to potentially condense down the racks a bit if you're moving them to a DC. Our guys in Auckland have assisted with quite a few of these moves, we're not a moving company but the guys have what it takes to de-assemble a rack and move it to somewhere else and even assist with bringing up the network again in its new home.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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AndyR

73 posts

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#1187872 3-Dec-2014 11:56

Thanks guys.

Seems like my best bet is going to be to move it ourselves. Urgh, that'll be fun for sure! We have 36U of rack servers, 6U of UPS, 12U of network equipment plus and entire rack size system called a Tandem (HP Non Stop now)!

I tried to get them to move it to co-lo a while back but the company is US owned and they wanted each regional office to have systems on premise, plus what doesn't help are the timelines. Last year from the time I got told we are moving office to the time we actually moved was 4 weeks and we've added nearly 200 staff in a few months, but no extra IT staff so just me still! No joke, so we had no choice but to maintain our existing systems in place and just move staff as we have 8 different incoming lines for customers MPLS etc which couldn't move that quick. Since then the company hasn't had a single weekend where I could get approval to move, but with our old building lease rapidly expiring they have to give me the time to do it so I know it'll happen pretty quick. I have most of the new links in place at our new premise and are gradually phasing these over as they come online.

I've already done all the legwork cabling wise. I have all the old setup already documented, and in our new office I already have new racks in place (as the old ones were horrible cheap crap), and these are already powered/cabled/labeled etc so its literally an unrack, move and re-rack and plug in the already marked up cables. The next part is just the external IP changes/mx records for the new location and change the site to site VPN to reflect any changes so I'm hoping it goes OK.

Most of the systems are virtualized anyway but I have a budget request in for this coming year to replace all the hardware anyway as it approaches its 5yr life cycle and it will reduce the footprint from 36u of rack servers down to 8U. I was hoping to have this prior to to move to avoid moving, but lo and behold they budget approval is taking to long so its no go.