How do I need to pack IT equipment when it is being moved?

by Shawn Simon on Wednesday, March 12 23:51

What should our company consider when moving servers & IT equipment when it s physically being moved? How do I need to pack IT equipment when it is being moved?

When a company is moving its IT equipment, servers, switches, and other equipment there is an important element that is often overlooked when everything else has been prepared for with pin point planning what to consider when physically moving servers & IT equipment!

If you are moving IT equipment to the next building, block, town, or state; your server equipment needs to be packed for the process.

Data centers or server rooms are kept clean according to many standards, are temperature controlled, air is filtered, and humidity is kept within a certain threshold. Some geographic regions even take earthquakes into account in a server environment.

Your computer equipment is not designed to operate and withstand uncontrolled environments. So if you are taking your servers out of a controlled environment and exposing them to an uncontrolled environment, what is the outcome?

Here is a scenario

A company has servers that need to be moved from Chicago, and they are being relocated over 2000 miles to California. In Chicago on moving day it is a balmy 28 degree day, and it is snowing outside. The weather in LA is a comfortable 70 degrees and sunny. Your relocation is now being executed and your data center and server room equipment is now being removed from:

1. A controlled environment
   1. Temperature controlled
   2. Humidity controlled
   3. Air quality is controlled
   4. Physical cleanliness is controlled
   5. Shock and vibration is controlled

You are now taking a valuable piece of equipment that a company has paid for, or is leasing that contains unbelievable amounts of data and software away from the environment in which it needs to be in to operate at optimum performance, and risk mitigation. Your company has to keep all of this equipment into place (data center or server room) so that it operates all in the order keeping your business 100% operational.

This equipment has a direct impact and effects:

1. A company
2. It s stock holders
3. Employee s
4. Leads
5. Revenue generation
6. Investments
7. Clients
8. Client data
9. Software
10. And the list goes on .

Your equipment being relocated has so many areas of focus (above) attached to it, and now without proper methods, and packaging from a simple Chicago to California move you are subjecting your servers and IT equipment to:

1. Physical human errors
2. Non controlled environmental conditions
   1. Snow
   2. Humidity
   3. Shock
   4. Static
   5. Heat
   6. Security (that items will not be lost or stolen)

There is quite a bit to think about when it comes to the topics or server moving.