If your organization is considering migrating its data center, there may be a number of challenges that you should be aware of.
If you are unaware of these challenges before beginning the migration process, you may conclude that data center migration was not the best decision for your organization.
Migrating data centers can be challenging under the best of circumstances. However, when there are other issues involved with these migrations, it can make the process even more difficult.
Coeo understands how important a data center migration can be and has helped thousands of organizations migrate their data centers to ensure a smooth transition with minimal effort from the customer.
By the end of this article, you will understand what data center migration looks like, the challenges that can occur with these migrations, and whether data center migration is a good fit for your organization.
What is a data center migration?
Data center migration takes place when an organization moves its data, applications, and resources from one physical location or technology environment to another.
A data center migration can take place for a variety of reasons including improved network performance or security, enhanced scalability and flexibility, reducing costs, or changing business needs.
Data center migration can result in a move from an on-premise data center to a different facility, from one cloud provider to another, or from an older, outdated data center to a more updated, modern one.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about data center migration or network performance issues or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
The challenges with data center migration
While data center migration may be a good decision for some organizations, there can be potential challenges that come with this process. The challenges with data center migration include:
Poor planning
One of the main challenges that can hinder the process of data center migration is poor planning or lack thereof.
Issues with network infrastructure are one of the most common challenges data center teams encounter during migration and are typically caused by poor planning for the entire infrastructure.
As a result of poor planning, issues with hardware, network applications, operating systems, and security environments can create challenges.
Additionally, poor planning can include failure to plan for downtime and failure to minimize downtime as much as possible.
While migrating data centers can result in downtime during the process, failure to plan for the downtime or having a longer period of downtime than expected can cause issues within your organization.
It is also important to plan for high server latency during and after the migration. When the migration is processing or shortly after the migration has been processed, you may experience high latency.
If you do not plan for this high latency, business consequences can occur if you cannot complete projects or service customers during this time.
Finally, poor financial planning for the migration can cause many problems for an organization. Without reliable financial planning, you may experience additional expenses that were not budgeted for.
Skipping a practice migration
Data center migrations can be complex and can oftentimes be prone to mistakes.
Typically, when your organization is preparing a data center migration, it may be a good idea to conduct a practice migration to prepare for the real data center migration.
A rehearsal will ensure that all aspects of the systems are operating properly and problematic issues are identified.
Conversely, skipping this practice migration can prove to be problematic when these issues are discovered during the actual migration process.
Failure to back up data before migration
It is critical to back up data before migrating data centers to avoid any data loss during the process. Backing up your data will create copies of your data just in case something goes wrong during the migration process.
Failing to back up your data can result in data loss during the migration. This can be detrimental to an organization if sensitive data is lost or compromised during the process.
Is data center migration right for your organization?
Now you understand what data center migration is and the challenges with it. However, it is also important to understand whether data center migration is a good decision for your organization.
Your network performance can only be as good as your network provider. If your organization has a poor network provider, migrating to a new data center with a new provider may benefit your organization.
If you are looking to enhance your network performance migrating to a more up-to-date data center can improve your performance and security as well as enhance network flexibility and scalability.
Also, if your organization is looking to lower the costs of your network infrastructure, migrating data centers may be a good decision.
Finally, if your organization has trouble internally managing your network due to other IT team commitments or a lack of space at your office location to host a data center, it may be beneficial to migrate to a separate location.
However, if your current network infrastructure has not given your organization any problems, you will not need to migrate data centers.
Alternatively, if your organization is struggling with poor network performance a solution such as SASE or SD-WAN may be a better alternative than migrating data centers.
Determining whether a data center migration is a good fit for your organization
Now you understand what data center migration is, the challenges with data migration, and whether it is a good decision for your organization. This will help you determine whether your organization should migrate your data center.
No organization can operate effectively with a poor-performing network or a poor network provider. These challenges can decrease employee productivity when a business relies on a network connection to perform daily tasks.
Coeo understands how important reliable network performance is and has helped thousands of organizations migrate data centers to improve their network performance and increase productivity.
We want you to understand what data center migration is and whether it is the best decision for your organization so you can determine whether you need to migrate data centers.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about data center migration or network performance issues or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
Now that you understand what data center migration is, the challenges with data migrations, and whether it is a good decision for your organization, read this article to understand data loss prevention tools that can improve your network performance:
