Moving to the data center: Preparation

And this is not an advertisement!) This is the real story of the long-running epic of choosing a data center, planning and preparing to move to a data center. The transfer itself is just around the corner, time is H - 11:00 02.01.2019.

Dear colleagues, I welcome you at the end of the outgoing year. I hope that for many he passed under the sign of successful realized projects, acquired knowledge and understanding that there is a desire and strength to move forward to conquer new heights.
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But who has the preparation for NG, and who is busy with work on preparing for the move to the data center and in this material I want to point out a number of aspects in planning for transmission to a commercial data center and pushing interaction with representatives of the data center.

(I want to focus on the fact that I do not pretend to the truth in the final instance, but I try to just objectively look at things and describe the services provided by the data center without the marketing component).

Before proceeding, let me remind you the current state of affairs. At one time, an analysis of the commercial data center market in St. Petersburg was carried out with a choice of 2 candidates for the target relocation. They turned out to be Xelent and LinxDatacenter. Frankly, personally, I was leaning toward the first applicant, and the choice of the company was similar ... but the sad events of February 2018 related to the most popular social network in Russia changed the prioritization.

After that, the only bidder broke into the lead, with whom communication was continued with a view to concluding a long-term agreement on the rental of server racks.

Let's start in order. Considering that a long time has passed since the last analysis of offers on the market of commercial data centers, it was decided to update the available offers on the market from among the previously considered options. Almost over the past year, to my surprise, rental prices have not changed fundamentally. Xelent, Linx, Miran answered promptly, and Selectle, as usual ... repeated the same dialogue as the 1st article about choosing a data center. I don’t know whether the attitude towards our company is the same, or just the poetic ... sloppy attitude. I ask you not to ascribe this statement to all the employees of Selectk, simply we can assume that the spit found one and the same stone 2 times, which led to the fact that more than one million rubles would go into the profit of another company.

After updating the prices of services from competitors, we boldly went to Lynx for the final costing of a complex proposal, which would include building an isolated separate cold corridor, dismantling, transporting equipment and then installing in new server racks, internal cross-connection according to the provided scheme, connecting existing providers to the target racks. To further analyze the figures more objectively, I’ll say that we are talking about renting 4 racks, connecting 10 links from 6 providers with various services from L2 channels to dark fiber and transporting and installing 2 server racks.

So, let's start: dismantling, transportation of equipment, installation. By submitting the list of equipment to Lynx, the initial estimate of “help” with its transportation amounted to almost 300 000 rub. Someone will say that this is normal, but when the company pays thousands of rubles, you want to understand how the total estimate is calculated. Well, judge for yourself, we calculated the approximate weight of the equipment installed in the rack, let it be + - 300-400 kg per rack, which is almost equal to the weight of the Red October piano. After that, a comparison of the weight of the piano, safe or ATM and the prices of transport companies for their transportation occurs in the head. My colleague and mentor Alexander) operated precisely with the size and weight of the piano, with which I absolutely agree. Of course, this is not entirely correct, but the difference in price for a move of 6 times is not clear and not transparent.



Now I understand why Avito is clogged up with cheap Pianos worth 1-3 thousand rubles. on the conditions of the importation is not, thank you.

Began to bargain ... Laid bargain .... The final offer turned out to be 5 times lower than the initial one. Phew ... this price has arranged us, made one step towards a brighter future. (I hope this is not a direct relationship with the quality of the dismantling and transportation of equipment, but I can tell you about this and be sure to tell you after the move itself ... of the non-name in the first days of NG.

The next step for me, as the final customer, was the statement that there is a monthly subscription fee for switching from the provider to the rental stand.

At the beginning of the article, I pointed out the number of connections around 10. The cost of one connection, depending on the type, was from 3 to 6 tr. In this state of affairs, the cost of monthly expenses immediately increased by almost 35,000 rubles from scratch. Yes, for the customer - it is an empty place. These are the so-called connecting lines. Everything would be fine, but as I said at the beginning, I had average prices on the market for similar services in my hands, and they ranged from 550 to 1000 p. per line depending on the data center and line type. In simple words, pay for the service itself to the provider and the data center, for the once-laid cable. Between ourselves, we joked that we could probably not pay, but then the cable route would pass through an unsafe area where there might be well, for example, landslides that could damage the cable. If to summarize, it is not only that there is an incomprehensible fee for a cable that has been laid once, but its cost is ESSENTIALLY higher than the market and offers have surfaced, and not to reconsider the choice of the data center in order to understand TCO. The result can be summarized in one word. We have agreed to! And the merit here is not only and not so much the arguments and the average price on the market as the real customer orientation of the manager on the part of Lynx, Selektel to the note ). I will not say how much we have left, but if we project the difference between the initial price and the final price for the transportation of equipment, then we can assume the price along the connecting lines. As they say, this is an offer you cannot refuse.



Let's go further - insurance. Be sure to insure the equipment being transported, regardless of the destination data center. Lynx is a necessary condition and rightly so. But even here, there seems to be nothing special, they indicated a list of the insured equipment and received a price, but the price itself did not immediately delight either. In the eyes of the customer, time insurance includes only 1-2 hours on the way. ... and it should be, but again for reasonable money. Following the negotiations, the premium for insurance was agreed and arranged for both parties).

The next step was to update the complete list of equipment to be relocated (as it turned out, there is a certain part that is either not profitable to transport or it can be virtualized, or simply this equipment is outdated). We know the current amount of installed equipment, its power consumption. It is necessary to think out in advance not only the logical, but also the physical layout of the equipment. Subsequently, according to the target scheme, the data center staff will install pre-labeled equipment.



Here, as in a minefield, you can not be wrong. You to help the program for conducting cross-journals. By the way, the above images use 2 excellent and free tools for keeping records of hardware, placing them in server cabinets, these are RackTables and subsequently selected NetBox.




The last preparatory stage - the preparation of the racks themselves. Internal cross-connect between cabinets. Frankly speaking, relying on the above points, I immediately decided for myself to internally cross racks to perform by the forces of my partners.

Everything is simple, it is enough to agree on a list of works, time to work, to undergo remote introductory instructions on the rules of work in the data center. At the time of my passage there was a mistake in one answer ... but it was fixed. After that, the work goes smoothly, the Linx workers fenced off the DANGEROUS place of work, well, just the workers of the road sector, happy.

Brief conclusion

We are fully prepared to move to the data center, without undue modesty, the work has been titanic and if not responsive to help from Linx, the result would have been deplorable (the staff of Lynx took on a lot of work on relationships with providers and contractors). For my part, I want to say, certainly the LinxDatacenter pricing part for me remains a mystery behind seven seals, while there are no complaints in terms of customer focus, an approach to the general only pleases.

And here's another nice bonus: When installing the server, it was a little scratched ... so, when you go to the machine room, there are patches and earplugs)





The move itself is scheduled for the January holidays. Here he is a gift for NG. So, I will definitely write directly about the relocation, about all the questions that have arisen, if they are, about the process of transportation, installation and launch of the entire non-small fleet. The most important thing is no work until FULL backup of TOTAL is performed! I am a supporter of 3-2-1 backup, so until all the backups are completed, we will not begin the move. As I was recently reminded of the saying: Admins are divided into those who do not make backups, and those who already do. (Oleg, thank you, laugh).

Well, in the undergrowth, today writing material, I needed to call Linx (not technical support), and the answering machine says Goodbye. Forgot to specify Saturday as Bisness day on your PBX. I hope the problem will be only that.

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas! Successes and good health. Well, we will work from the 2nd of January.