Problem Specification Currently, the Advantage Energy Technology (TEA) data centre is located on the second floor of a renovated old bank building. The company is moving to a new, one-level building located in the recently developed industrial complex. On February 1st, Brian is formally assigned the task by the UP of Operations with the following guidelines: From start to finish, it is anticipated the entire project will take three to four months to complete. It is essential that Eats 235 clients suffer no downtime.
The UP advises Brian to come back to the Executive Committee on February 15, with a presentation on the scope of the project that includes costs, “first cut” timeline, and proposed team members. Brian had some preliminary discussions with some of Teat’s managers from each of the functional departments and then arranged for a full day scope meeting on February 4 with a few of the angers and technical representatives from Operations, systems, facilities, and applications. The scope team determined the following: Three to four month is a feasible project timeline.
First-cut cost estimate is $80,000 – $90,000. Critical to the “no-downtime” requirement is the need to completely rely on Teat’s remote disaster recovery “hot” site for full functionality. Brian will serve a project manager of a team consisting of one team member each from facilities, operations/systems, operations/telecommunications, systems & applications and customer service. Briar’s report on this to the Executive Committee was approved. He recruited his team and scheduled their first team meeting (March 1) as the initial task of his project planning process.
Once the initial meeting is conducted Brian can hire the contractors to renovate the new data center. During this time Brian will figure out how to design the network. Brian estimates that screening and hiring a contractor will take about one week and that the network design will take about two weeks. The new center requires a new ventilations system. The manufacturer’s requirements include an ambient temperature of 67 degrees to keep all of the data servers running at optimal speeds. The ventilation system has a lead time of three weeks.
Brian will also need to order new racks to hold servers, switches, and other network devices. The racks have a two week delivery time. The data center supervisor requested that Brian replace all of the old power supplies and data cables. Brian will need to order these as well. Because Brian has a great relationship with the vendor, they guarantee that it will take only one week lead time for the power supplies and the data cables. Once the new ventilation system and rack arrive, Brian can begin installing them. It will take en week to install the ventilation system and three weeks to install the racks.
The renovation of the new data center can begin as soon as the contractors have been hired. The contractors tell Brian that construction will take 20 days. Once the construction begins and before Brian installs the ventilation system and racks, the city inspector must approve the construction of the raised floor. The city inspector will take two days to approve the infrastructure. After the city inspection and after the new power supplies and cables have arrived, Brian can install the power supplies and run the cables.
Brian estimates that it will aka 5 days to install the power supplies and one week to run all of the data cables. Before Brian can assign an actual date for taking the network offline and switching to the hot remote site, he must get approval from each of the functional units (“Switchover Approval”). Meetings with each of the functional units will require one week. During this time he can initiate a power check to ensure that each of the rack has sufficient voltage. This will require only one day. Upon completion of the power checks, he can take one week to install his test servers.
The test servers will test all of the primary network functions and act as safeguard before the network is taken offline. The batteries must be charged; ventilation installed, and test servers up and running before management can be assured that the new infrastructure is safe, which will take two days. Then they will sign off the Primary Systems check, taking one day of intense meetings. They will also set an official date for the network move. Brian is happy that everything has gone well thus far and is convinced that the move will just go as smoothly.
