Sooner or later, your servers will reach the end of their life cycle and face decommissioning as a complex and often stressful operation. Since your company’s data center is the true “center” of all of your applications and sensitive data, planning and carrying out a project of this scale can be a nerve-wracking experience. Nevertheless, keeping one's head and having a systematic approach is crucial for smooth transitions and keeping your systems safe and secure.

Regardless of the reasons why you’re shutting down your company’s data center, before taking the first steps on this journey of no return (hopefully, with no regret either), take a look at this short checklist of things that should be carefully managed in the course of data center migration.

Database migration checklist

Before starting your database migration make sure to take a note of everything that’s going to be moved and in which order. Then, create a checklist and make sure everything is being moved swimmingly and in order you’ve established. Since no database is the same, it’s inevitable that some things will differ. However, this database migration checklist isn’t meant to cover every single database, but to act as a run-of-the-mill example.

1. Applications

Since not all apps are stored on end-user hardware, but usually utilize very large databases stored on data center’s physical computing components, you’ll have to migrate them from there to their new IT environment. Standard steps of app migrations include careful planning, testing the plan with a mock migration, performing apps migration stage by stage, and doing follow-up tests to make sure everything went as planned.

2. Database servers

These high-powered databases can grow several gigabytes in size, and given that they store data and manage data stored for network users and different devices, their migration should be given deeper thought. Also, it’s important to check if existing shortcuts and access paths are continuously updated on the user's side.

3. Firewalls

Nowadays, having a firewall is a crucial part of your business' security system. Without a firewall to keep destructive and disruptive forces at bay, your network would be vulnerable to all sorts of cyber threats. This is why your firewalls configuration files are supposed to be reviewed in detail before you start setting up a firewall on your new data center and transferring anything.

4. Antivirus and antimalware

While antivirus detects and destroys viruses and other malware from the systems, antimalware goes a step further and protects your systems not only from malicious software but also from other more advanced software threats. Because of that, when decommissioning your data center you should make sure that antivirus and antimalware are correctly configured on your new data center, so they can provide the proper level of protection.

5. Support configurations and network settings

Lastly, don’t forget to move support configurations and network settings like network apps frameworks, FTP servers, gateway settings, and anything else that enables access to your company’s apps and data.

Double-check everything

Decommissioning a data center may seem like a great deal of work, and justifiably so. However, by carefully planning this project, double-checking every single section, and then conducting it step by step, you can facilitate the process and make everyone’s part a bit easier. Also, keep in mind that if you and your staff don’t feel up to the task, you always have a choice to contract a third-party decommissioning provider.