Metagyre was engaged to develop the return on investment analysis for consolidating Client’s seven data centers and then move their main data center from one Seattle, WA. location which they had out grown to a new Seattle location. The project consisted of selecting and building out a new 6,000 sf data center followed by moving their equipment and applications into the new facilities. Their computational environment included 1,000+ virtual and physical servers, 1.5 petabytes of EMC storage, mainframe, tape backup and Cisco network. Client’s main data center supports their entire on-line e-commerce mission critical applications and approximately 200 different systems. Client’s business required that the equipment, applications and data move without disrupting their 24×7 ability to accept and fulfill revenue generation.

Client uses a number of technologies to deliver world class on-line services to their customers. These included: EMC Storage, Cisco, Checkpoint, F5, IBM Mainframe, IBM Storage, IBM Blade Centers, IBM xSeries, HP servers, HP Storage, Sun Solaris, VMware, Linux, Microsoft Windows 200X, MS SQL, Oracle, and Microsoft Exchange.

Design and Build Out
Metagyre partnered with Client’s senior management to structure the project and budget required to complete the data center design, procurement and build out. The major components we developed in this stage included:

• Technical site reviews and contract redline activities side by side with Client’s senior management.
• Design and build out the new data center facility including structured cabling, electrical and floor layouts.
• Design,procure and integrate network connectivity for the new data center and build a dark fiber backbone back to their existing main data center.
• Source and develop criteria for selecting sub-contractors as well as working with sub-contractors to design and implement power, fire suppression, cooling, lighting and structured cabling.
• Extend the network across the two data center sites.
• Designate rack layouts, server placement, port assignments and in-rack cable standards.
• Lead workshops with client staff and EMC to establish SAN and storage requirements, procurement contracts and implementation.
• Secure stakeholder agreement of plans, designs and procurements.
• Schedule and manage all professional services and sub-contracts for activities requiring third party activities or equipment purchases.
• Test core data center infrastructure, redundant power and networking.
• Stage, test and verify seed servers and storage.

System Migration
Metagyre worked with Client’s system engineers to develop the detailed plans to formalize application and data move tasks. These detailed plans called short interval schedules included test, go/no go and roll back procedures for each component of the application. We engaged the stakeholders to gain plan approvals and schedule around business needs. Metagyre engineered and implemented several unique migration strategies based on complex system and data business requirements.

Client’s virtual machines were migrated using VMware’s VMotion over the dark fiber backbone and reintroduced into production running on an ESX cluster in the new data center. In the case of redundant physical clusters, the cluster was split, one of the servers brought up in the new data center to re-establish the cluster and then the cluster was failed over to the server in the new data center.

By advancing the purchases of other project’s planned equipment refreshes, the seed equipment was acquired with minimal additional cost. The seed equipment was staged as necessary in the new data center prior to system migration. Following the migration of a system, the equipment in the old data center was moved to the new data center to serve as the seed equipment for the next system.

Obstacles
Client’s systems are tied closely to high profile events such as the Grammys, World Cup, and breaking news. Metagyre’s responsibility was to develop a flexible migration schedule that could respond quickly to Client’s business needs. When changes in world events dictated a scheduled migration had to be placed on hold, we were able to substitute and fill the schedule with another system migration container. Metagyre’s migration process allowed Client to retain the flexibility needed to meet changing business requirements while meeting the scheduled end date.

Project Summary
The main Client data center was successfully relocated within the allotted time frame and budget while maintaining the business continuity needs of their enterprise. Following the move, older equipment whose services were migrated to new seed gear was repurposed in support of their development and test environments or to expand disaster recovery capacity.

With this data center move and system migration, Client was able to significantly lower their monthly costs by consolidating the number of sites managed and increase the capabilities they provided to their internal business customers through its improved design features.