Determine dates with you telecom suppliers so that the new office is online before your move for both Phones and Data connections.

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1 IT Office Move - Tips and Check List: Office IT Move Plan Introduction: If you are moving to a New Office and/or Data Center (Cloud), or if this is also a Colocation exercise please note this is a basic outline and should be used as a starting point to build your own Plan for your IT Office Move. In building your IT Office Move plan you should consult with your colleagues from different departments and your suppliers so that their requirements and ides are taken into account. Suppliers may have boundaries, limitations and time constraints that could impact your plan. Often companies plan to undertake IT technology and/or IT Application software upgrades as part of an Office IT Move and these need to be integrated into the plan and change it from a simple backup, shutdown, pack, move, unpack, install and boot up exercise. Office IT Move Preparation and Planning: Survey your Office IT Infrastructure and equipment including, PC s, Workstations, Printers, NAS storage, computer Peripherals (USB speakers, chargers optical disk drivers, etc.) servers, NAS, SAN s Tape Libraries, and Optical Jukeboxes and build a list by location, responsible person and destination in the new office. Next Survey you Software Applications, like SAP, Oracle Financials, Microsoft Dynamics, Quotation system, Warehousing etc. this will then be tagged to the hardware which will affect the classification of the hardware. Survey the suppliers for voice and data connections ( in Singapore this is likely to be Singtel, Starhub, M1, MyRepublic or ViewQuest), consider UPS s ( uninterruptable power supplies and printer cartridges etc., ) If you have a Computer room you may or may not want to move your Racks, Air Conditioning units and UPS s. The Phone system would normally be included in planning this stage. Commission at Network person to design a network schematic and floor layout to locate large and network printers, Computers Servers, racks, UPS s and Air Conditioning units. Equipment in racks requires access at both the front and back of the units. Cabling routes, cable trays, ducting, and Ethernet cables will need to be installed in the new Office\Data Center before the move and continuity testing will be undertaken. Jumper cables should be provisions for the cable management within the racks. Larger Data Center good practice has Server and Networks equipment in different racks. Determine dates with you telecom suppliers so that the new office is online before your move for both Phones and Data connections. Once you have a plan, with most of your dates you can engage with your IT Mover like Superior Movers to assess the volume, discuss the packing, order of IT Equipment removal from the existing office and the order of delivery of PC s, Printers, Servers, Web Servers, NAS and SAN s and Page 1 of 6

2 networking equipment like Internet Gateway modems, Firewalls, routers and managed and unmanaged switches. At this stage you will need to appoint a Project manager for the Office IT move and maybe an internal team to manage the project. As you build the plan you will need to co-opt your suppliers as part of the Project Team to assist in resolving conflicts, identifying holes in the Office IT Move plan and keep the plan status current. The IT Office Move Budget by this stage should be accurate, including a contingency and approved. Contractors and partners agreements should be in place so that the following stage can start. At this stage the IT Mover will want to start labelling computers, servers, NAS and SANS based on order of removal, order of delivery, the location and who to call after start up. Telecoms contractors will need access to the new site and if you are using a Data Center you will need to prepare and have approved clearances for access for your staff and staff of your contractors. There are options, if you do not have an internal person capable of being the Project Manager then you can hire in a Project Manager or Co-opt one from one of your supplier. This may make sense as if more that 50% of your IT servers/it Infrastructure came from a Company like IBM, HP or Dell then they would be familiar with your NAS or SAN;s supplier like EMC or Hitachi and they would know and have contacts from your Telecom Supplier. The last but not least part of the IT Plan is the Contingency Plan. This needs to be thought through in a very logical manner. The first stage is to identify the Application software that is critical to running business with minimal downtime. Typically these are and Sale Quotation systems. However it depends on the company and how these systems have been constructed. Sales and Quotation systems could be part of your financials Systems like SAP, Oracle financials or MS Dynamics or they may be part of an independent system. This would then link to the Computer Hardware and the tagging you did previously, which then could be damaged in transit or if a hard disk goes out on boot up. So you need to answer how you would recover. You need to know what server is the back up for critical Applications or who has the new Hard Disk and the back up on which type of media and will it work on a different server? Disposal is another topic that can be added to the IT Move Plan. Often equipment that has been made redundant, perhaps the equipment is End of Life or the company changes the way IT services are provided internal. At this stage the timing of the Trucks, the route and the recovery plan should a truck break down or be involved in an accident is reviewed. By now you should be ready to move. Page 2 of 6

3 Office IT Move Packing Up: For a small Office IT Moves the mover will probably do it all including furniture, office equipment etc. The IT equipment will be disconnected and the cables, keyboard, mouse etc. will be bagged and the IT Mover will execute to plan. For larger IT moves PC s maybe disconnected and cables, keyboard and other peripherals bagged by the users. Typically IT contractors disconnect the servers, printers, UPS s, the SAN s, NAS and other equipment. Space for packing should be allocated for the Packers so that bubble wrap and other materials are close to tables etc. Also IT Equipment is packed on trollies for the order or sequence required at the delivery end. Space is required to marshal these loaded trollies with IT Equipment A good plan has everyone in place just as the first servers are shutdown, normally after the backups are complete. The project manager will make available systems to the IT Mover as they are shut down and depending on the volume of equipment there may be one or multiple trucks and several trips. Truck journeys need to be timed and monitored to the plan. Based on truck arrival times, resources will be made available in the new Office premises for the IT and for installation of computers in a computer room or at the Cloud Data Center. Office IT Move unpacking and Booting up: Normally in Singapore Racks are not moved. New Racks are installed in the new Data Center and the IT servers, firewalls, routers, NAS storage, SAN storage and other IT Infrastructure equipment is slotted into the racks that are preconfigured in the planning stage. The IT equipment is pre-labelled to the slot. Subject to Customer, new power cables and Ethernet cables may be used at the new site Computer Room or at the Data Center. Typically the Movers location the Office Computer PC s, Servers Networking Equipment, Printers etc are located in the office and then the IT contractor will reconnection and boot up. In the case of problems on boot up there is a process pre agreed in the planning stage and may involve, maintenance contracts from the equipment manufacturer/suppliers and/or spares and the use of backups. Sign Off Documentation: The Office IT Mover will have some form of Sign Off procedure and documentation. Often this is signed off on the final day. Page 3 of 6

4 Office IT Trends and other IT and ICT Considerations: Often when undertaking and Office move it is an appropriate time to upgrade IT Infrastructure, add new Applications and Servers and/or retire and dispose of old or retired IT applications, computer servers and networking and communications equipment. The following list of Technology is provided to assist in building your Office IT Move plan; a. Servers & Virtualization Virtualization of servers is often a way of achieving a high utilisation of server hardware using either Microsoft s Hyper V or VMware s product it has the added advantage of being able to move Servers and Applications to different hardware assisting up time in the case of hardware failure and for Disaster Recovery situations There could be financial benefits if you could reduce the number of servers racks from two to one in a Data Center. This could be worth adding to your checklist b. Internet The internet has changed dramatically. Speed has increase in recent years in Singapore from less than 1 Mbps to 1 Gbps with connection to the fibre infrastructure in Singapore. Also some companies are looking to a redundant link to keep their operation up in the event a line is taken out. So Internet capacity and performance is worth review. In Singapore you may need to check if your new site is fibre ready with your Telecom or ISP. c. Networking Wiring Wiring is faster and cheaper if you install it in a new office before staff move into the new office. Fixed cabling later can cause disruptions to the office operation if it is required later. Each workstation in the new office needs to be reviewed for desktop connection, laptop connection, a desktop printer and WiFi access. Depending on your office you will require a Phone and maybe TV s and Audio Visual equipment connections. Typically the minimum to each workstation is two Cat 5e or Cat 6 cables. Note that all wiring that should have a labeling system d. Wireless WiFi Wireless or WiFi is now cheap, efficient and fast enough to handle a normal office load for Data work. If you have people with high voice capacity load then you may want to study the load requirements separately. Page 4 of 6

5 There are several systems that provide multiple wireless access software for continuous access and these again should be reviewed as part of you plan. The rule of thumb is one WiFi access point per 2000 square feet e. Phones analogue and VOIP Phones and Computers are similar in the architectural design but the technology for phones is different enough that you would use a specialist contractor to implement and support Moving phones can require significant interaction with the Telco and so allow time to coordinate the arrangements. Phones system have significant configuration requirements and this should be discussed with the supplier. If you move from Analogue to Digital you will need to use different handsets. One of the trends is to move from an analogue phone system to a VOIP ( Voice over IP ) system and then operate you phones on your data network. This is possible in small office if you internal LAN is operation at 100 Mbps or higher. However if your network load is indeterminate, your phone traffic is high it may be that you should run a separate VOIP Cat 5e or Cat 6 Network. This increase your cable requirements and so consider this aspect when building your plan. f. Meeting and Board Rooms Audio Visual Systems Meeting Rooms and Board rooms are set up with a range of Audio Visual equipment and the general office may require Smart TV s for the provision of real time business intelligence or for providing general information for staff. There are specialist suppliers in this sector with specific equipment designed for meeting rooms and you should consider a meeting should you have Board and meeting room A/V requirements. g. Access Control and CCTV/Video Surveillance Access control may be required where you require staff to swipe an access card and/or they use passwords or biometrics for access to the office and certain rooms, like the Computer Server room. Access control is often required if you have multiple access points. Along with access control many companies consider CCTV/Video Surveillance when specific area s like receptions desks, door access internal views and external views, in retails stores the POS terminal is normally monitored and often car park areas especially if staff work round the clock. Add to you plan if required h. Recycling and/or Disposal If in the course of you IT Office Move you have upgrade and virtualised you may find that you have equipment that can be recycled. This could be internally for the next IT Application project or as dedicated backup. Page 5 of 6

6 If it is excess to requirement, then you need to contact an electronics recycling company that knows how to dispose of electronic equipment. The IT Mover will know these companies or may handle as part of their operation. Key is handling the disks. They are normally removed degaussed and then destroyed. Alternatively these days the disks can be wiped before that are released for disposal using software tools. Often customers require that the disks be removed and a sharp implement be driven through the disk to physically destroy the device. i. Upgrades Just the time While some would not want to undertake project upgrades and new projects during an Office IT Move. It often makes sense. This will create timing and critical points in the IT Move plan. However with adequate planning and the right people it will normally all be completed on time. Just to close this document with the starting point. This paper is a Check List for an Office IT Move and you should use it to build your company s plan. Page 6 of 6