What Retailers Should Consider Before a Server Move

by Stephanie Faris on Monday, November 24 6:00

Whether your files are hosted at your corporate headquarters or at a third-party data center, the need to eventually move or replace that equipment is unavoidable. Equipment eventually ages and must be upgraded. In some cases, merchants are choosing to migrate to cloud-based solutions for their e-commerce and store payment processing needs.

Wherever your business's customer information is stored, it's important to safeguard it at all times. If payments are processed and customer data is collected on a server, you are ultimately responsible for ensuring it's safe, even when it's hosted offsite. Before your next server move, here are three things every retailer should do.

Choose the Right Time

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the two busiest days for most retailers. For that reason, most businesses would want to avoid a server room in the weeks surrounding those two days. Each business has its own ups and downs, however, so it's important to identify when your least busy time is and choose that date for your big move.

If a third-party host is handling the move and can only negotiate within a specified date range, carefully plan to make sure your move will have minimal business impact. Skilled IT relocation specialists can come up with a plan to shift from one server to another seamlessly, with server movers arriving at a designated time and working to minimize downtime.

Physical Security

During your move, your data will be vulnerable at several points along the way. For that reason, it's imperative that you choose an experienced server moving company that has protections in place to keep your customer data safe at each step. This includes transporting equipment in a truck that is attended at all times, as well as having trustworthy IT movers on staff who have been carefully screened.

On the day of the move, a business should also take measures to ensure someone supervises the server room during the time doors are unlocked and propped open. Once server equipment arrives at the new destination, a trusted team member should be on site to supervise security there, as well. If a third-party data center is handling the move, businesses should ask questions before the move to make sure these security measures will be taken.

Protect Data

You've spent a great deal of time building your customer databases and setting up your payment processing environment. It's important to ensure before the server relocation that all data is backed up and retrievable following the move. If something is lost, it may not be recoverable, especially if you're switching to a new server.

If possible, test connectivity before making the switch to make sure your POS systems will be able to access everything they need to connect. Work in coordination with third-party providers, your moving company, and your IT staff to make sure you'll be fully operational on the first day of business following the relocation.

A server move can be scary, whether your business is an e-commerce retailer or has brick-and-mortar locations. Through careful planning and entrusting your move to experienced specialists, you can ensure your move is completed with minimal disruption to operations.