{"id":223,"date":"2020-02-24T18:37:58","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T16:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/?p=223"},"modified":"2020-02-24T18:38:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T16:38:00","slug":"how-to-successfully-perform-a-data-center-upgrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/how-to-successfully-perform-a-data-center-upgrade\/","title":{"rendered":"How to successfully perform a data center upgrade"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time-approximately:<\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

When data center hardware becomes outdated, there are a few options. Here are ways that admins can ensure that a migration is efficient and downtime is minimized. <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Erica Mixon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senior Site Editor – TechTarget – SearchEnterpriseDesktop<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tPublished: 26 Nov 2018<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A data center upgrade is like a home remodeling project; it requires planning, a budget and a certain finesse to ensure that existing infrastructure isn’t damaged in the process. There’s also the option to skip the remodel altogether and head to a condo with homeowners’ association fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Admins must make a few important decisions before they decide to tackle a data center upgrade. It’s an expensive, time-consuming and risky project — and in the age of the cloud, it’s sometimes unnecessary. If admins decide that upgrading the data center is the best route, they should know how to make the process a smooth one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When to move to the cloud or colocation<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The public cloud versus on-premises debate is never-ending, but the pro-cloud argument is growing stronger. A few years ago, on-premises data centers were necessary to maintain a level of security that cloud couldn’t provide; but now, public cloud providers are offering higher security protocols to comply with stringent data protection laws<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Admins should also consider the price<\/a> of upgrading. Expensive hardware might not be worth it if the organization is willing to sacrifice a level of control to a cloud provider. Plus, a cloud provider can offer more IT support and maintenance<\/a> than a small to midsize organization can afford to keep in-house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Admins shouldn’t simply migrate to the cloud, however, without determining the necessary network bandwidth. Cloud providers need to share internet traffic with other tenants, which can put a strain on individual network resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organizations should also consider colocation facilities<\/a> to cut the costs of cooling equipment, staffing, hardware and maintenance. The issue of control, however, once again comes into play. IT has a support staff to call when downtime occurs, but they don’t have control over how long it takes to remediate the issue. And if an organization didn’t properly evaluate the service-level agreement with a colocation provider, then IT can stumble upon hidden fees or caveats when a problem occurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To avoid these problems, admins should determine which workloads — if any — belong in a colocation facility. They should also make a disaster recovery plan in case of an outage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to prep for a data center upgrade<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If admins decide to keep workloads on premises and upgrade the hardware, they must ensure that downtime doesn’t occur<\/a>. Or, if it does, they must ensure that it doesn’t affect mission-critical workloads. Admins should also establish a workflow for the server upgrade process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditionally, admins could let end users know in advance about an upgrade and take workloads offline during non-work hours. But this method isn’t possible for organizations with remote employees or global organizations that span various time zones. In these cases, admins should move the affected workloads to a public cloud and reroute the traffic before starting the upgrade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Admins should also perform pre-upgrade testing on new versions of software that they plan to use. Admins can perform the data center upgrade process in a lab environment to vet out bugs and compatibility issues. Service providers can help with this process for organizations that lack the necessary in-house resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make upgrades carefully<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Admins should replace data center hardware with redundancy to prevent data loss<\/a>. For example, admins that need to replace a network switch should have a secondary switch in place before the replacement occurs to prevent connectivity loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

E<\/a>rica Mixon<\/a>\u00a0asks:<\/strong><\/p>

How do you perform upgrades in the data center? <\/strong> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Join the Discussion<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft designed Windows servers as failover clusters<\/a> that support rolling upgrades to address this situation. Admins can perform the upgrade process so that only one server node at a time is offline. However, admins should first ensure that the cluster they are trying to upgrade can run its workloads without a cluster node.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Admins should also establish a workflow for the server upgrade process. The most mission-critical workloads aren’t necessarily the first ones they should migrate. It often makes more sense to migrate the least important workloads first to ensure that the migration techniques work properly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time-approximately:<\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>When data center hardware becomes outdated, there are a few options. Here are ways that admins can ensure that a migration is efficient and downtime is minimized. Erica Mixon Senior Site Editor – TechTarget – SearchEnterpriseDesktop Published: 26 Nov 2018 A data center upgrade is like a home remodeling project; it requires planning, a budget and a certain finesse to<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,19,4,5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-data-center-hardware","category-data-centre-servers","category-datacenter-news","category-engage-the-experts","category-industry-news-and-expert-advise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions\/224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}