Twin Site, Time Pressured Relocations , completed without stress
The challenge
A large regional utility company needed to relocate large amounts of infrastructure from the West Midlands to two other sites in the south east. The migrations comprised Solihull to Woking (84x devices) and Solihull to Hounslow (294x devices & 8x freestanding racks), to take place over two separate weekends. However, the old environment was in poor condition and disorganised, to the point that the connectivity couldn’t be fully audited, making the pre-cabling and network planning tasks particularly challenging.
Our solution
JSC provided a range of services to overcome the physical auditing deficiencies, including remote connectivity discovery and software based discovery. A new core network was deployed to the largest site and fully cabled in preparation for the migration, with remote support and troubleshooting of WAN link connectivity. Due to the racks and structured cabling installation being delayed, pre-cabling of the environments was completed (c.1200+ cables) with only one day to spare before migration.
At the outset of the largest site migration, the initial handover was severely delayed due to difficulties with shutdown. The expected handover of 1pm on Friday was pushed back to 8pm, increasing time pressure and requiring our team to reschedule all resources overnight. JSC mobilised further resources on the Saturday and installed all equipment by 2pm on Saturday. This included multiple blade chassis, and 8x large multi blade switches, storage systems, and large servers.
By 5pm, we’d achieved the initial handover and power-up of first core equipment, having completed a full de-rack, move, rerack and re-cable from Solihull to London in only 21 hours. By 9pm, all equipment had been handed over and full power restored. We then supported the client through to 11pm and on Sunday for troubleshooting, with on-call support on Monday.
The outcomes
The client was absolutely delighted with the project, with the secure moves of all equipment delivered on time. Thanks to JSC’s 100% successful migration, the client now benefits from:
- Increased rack capacity supporting future growth
- Immediate improvements to power use, resilience and cooling
- Fully documented environment with cable labelling and equipment labelling
- Fully operational infrastructures at their preferred sites
- An organised environment that is easy to manage and upscale
