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Hosts with the most think and plan ahead for co-lo spaces

Gain the edge you want – clarity precedes every smooth migration

Sponsored The trend of enterprises relocating data centres (DCs) from their own premises to multi tenant data centre (MTDC) facilities has been accelerating for several years as these co-location spaces add additional services, such as direct fiber links to cloud providers.

On the surface, migrating into an MTDC should be a walk in the park for enterprises that have been building their own DCs. No more substantial effort, time and money invested in building, managing and upgrading facilities. Rather, tap on opportunities for significantly reduced budgets, speedier time to market and future-proofing that MTDCs offer.

The reality is that many enterprises building out their cages in a colocation DC often fail to ensure solid planning up front. This is a recipe for ending up as a cautionary tale in MTDC migration.

To make this transition as easy and smooth as possible, CommScope has outlined the best practices for MTDC migration to provide an understanding of the physical infrastructure, design requirements and strategic considerations that must precede a successful deployment. The migration process begins with strategic and tactical considerations encompassing the current and future state of the DC – its load, scale, capabilities and cost structure – projected outward along a three- to five-year timeline.

Key stakeholders must be involved in determining network design requirements and how the enterprise DC can be integrated with the MTDC. Current and future requirements must be mapped to the MTDC’s capabilities along with considerations for in-country regulations governing data sovereignty and risks related to geographic location.

Plan, design, migrate

Beyond the strategic considerations of an enterprise’s IT requirements across all key stakeholders, understanding in detail how the MTDC will meet those needs is equally important. Internal stakeholders must ask MTDC representatives the right questions on business-critical tactical elements that impact DC operations and the overall health of the enterprise.

The established IT requirements pave the way for migration planning. The scope of work and target completion dates enable the project team to anticipate challenges before they occur. You may want to engage an external consultant who is experienced in this process. As a DC manager, you don’t have to go it alone. CommScope has the MTDC Alliance Program offering experience and expertise to help you develop a long-term migration strategy designed to keep your DC adaptable, capable and efficient.

Your defined project scope and list of objectives are needed to develop a request for proposal (RFP) that will be sent to potential MTDCs. The RFP clarifies the present and future needs of your co-located DC to decide on the right MTDC provider.

After identifying your MTDC partner, designing a successful migration entails exploring the MTDC’s physical space and its ability to adapt to the ever-evolving infrastructure landscape. Consider floor space and the future; square footage cost; cloud demand; remote management capabilities; network uptime; standards and compliance; network capacity planning; decisions for best transmission medium and cable routing and management; among others.

CommScope has a proven track record in addressing infrastructure issues, trends, drivers and recommendations for high-speed migration with solutions supporting 8-, 12- and 24-fiber parallel and two-fiber duplex applications.

Whether you own an MTDC or are responsible for your own infrastructure as an MTDC tenant, the CommScope SYSTIMAX® structured cable fibre solutions offers the performance, reliability and agility DCs need now and in the future. The modular, high-density fi-ber infrastructure solutions support speeds up to 400G with a simple upgrade path.

Day Two Operations

With design finalised, it’s time to fit out and install the physical containment, racks and cabling in the MTDC while ensuring that your staff and contractors have physical access to the new hosted location. The strategic pre-work accomplished and tactical considerations accounted so far will ensure a smooth physical migration of assets themselves.

After moving and migration, it’s time to settle into a new routine of maintaining your infra-structure within the MTDC environment. In contrast to managing an in-house DC, your technicians must measure whether co-located DC performance is compliant with expectations.

Accurate audit trails can be automatically generated by an automated infrastructure management (AIM) solution such as CommScope’s imVision®. An established, documented troubleshooting process is necessary for on-site technicians to address problems quickly. Take advantage of an AIM solution to detect unauthorized changes or connections in structured cabling and troubleshoot connectivity incidents. The AIM solution can be an invaluable tool in providing up-to-date connectivity documentation.

The MTDC should offer guidance on plans for expansion, contingencies for business continuity, and equipment lifecycle management to realize new potential and efficiencies as they become available. In considering the total cost of ownership for the various MTDC migration scenarios, focus must be fixed on your specific enterprise strategies as well as the velocity of change and scaling requirements in your DC environment.

Sponsored by CommScope®

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