Century Link – Cyxtera - Case Study

Tailor-Made Data Centre Migration

Century Link - Cyxtera - Data Centre Migration & Re-Cable - Case Study

The Challenge

CenturyLink is the second largest U.S. communications provider to global enterprise customers. With customers in more than 60 countries and an intense focus on the customer experience, CenturyLink strives to be the world’s best networking company by solving customers’ increased demand for reliable and secure connections.

A client of theirs Cyxtera, represents a vision founded at the confluence of two revolutionary forces: the continued evolution of enterprise IT, and a transformation in infrastructure security.

CenturyLink approached Technimove to

Cable more than 50 cables on the day of the migration without a pre-cable
Migrate 10 x devices between sites

The Solution

Planning and Project Management

Our migration methodology is designed to focus on minimising downtime, reducing risks and guaranteeing the efficient delivery of server migration projects. A key element of this process is ensuring that your project manager has prepared for the challenges and utilised the available resources in the most effective way.

The Migration

On the day of the migration, Technimove engineers arrived onsite 30 minutes prior to the start of the migration to sign in and prepare packaging material. One of our engineer headed straight to the destination site to begin pre-cabling to ensure downtime was kept as little as possible.

Once onsite, the devices were handed over to Technimove to systematically Decommission, De-rack and wrap in anti-static bubble wrap for protection, before being placed into purpose built, foam lined, server flight cases.

Once the flight cases were secured in the pre-fueled GPS tracked Mercedes sprinters, Technimove travelled directly to the destination site via the safest and shortest pre-planned route.

Once at CenturyLink, Slough the equipment was unpacked and installed in line with the destination rack plans. Once racked, devices were Recommissioned in line with the patching schedules.

Technimove undertook final checks before handing the equipment back over the client for the testing to commence ahead of schedule.

The Result

Technimove ensured that the migration was delivered and achieved all of the goals for the project. From the very beginning, the procedure we had put in place through our project management processes ensured the safe migration of their servers.

As a result, we delivered above and beyond expectations by;

Sending 3 engineers on the project rather than 2. 1 engineer went straight to the destination to begin pre-cabling the racks, so by the time the other 2 engineers had decommissioned the kit and travelled to the destination site, most of the cables would have been labelled and pre-cabled.

Supplying brand new cables, so we could ensure the correct lengths were used, making the environment look as neat and tidy as possible.

Early engagement with the end user to ensure the patching schedule was completed a few days prior to the move so I could review it.

Chris Fisher, Associate / Infrastructure Support said: ‘I was happy with the care the team put into the patching and the fact we brought orange and black power cables, so it is easy to distinguish what powers belong to which device. This is something I will be passing on to my seniors’