Moving to the data center: how it was

Dear habrovchane, good afternoon!

To begin with, I want to sincerely wish you all a Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!
Well, right off the bat. In the last article, it was promised to tell directly about the actual move to the Linxdatacenter data center in St. Petersburg. Even the time was set to H - 11:00 02.01.2019.

At the preparatory stage, a lot was written, I can only say that during the period from December 30 to January 2, everything that was possible was backed up, and as noted by zacat , the integrity of part of the copies was checked. So someone January 1 depicted the fight with the salad, and someone vdil backup work.

Well, let's get down to the fun part.

Be careful, under the cat VERY MUCH content.

On the appointed day on January 2nd, at about 9:15, we met with the data center representative Oleg, and we expected the appearance of representatives of the “transport department” at 10:00. To our surprise, at 9:26 am, the “transport workshop” was in place. In the background can be seen the board and wheels ... Before time, commendable.
')


In a huge van brought a giant roll to "calm admin". I will tell about the van itself a little lower, be sure to read it.



While there was a poly-agitation instruction on how to take care of the equipment being dismantled and a degree of responsibility equal to “take care of myself”, I was engaged in turning off all systems, blades, controllers, chassis, skhd and others. This is not a trivial procedure that requires patience and a clear sequence, although for the workers of the “transport department” it was presented as in the picture below.



The next stage looked like this, physical de-energizing.





Important preparatory stage



In advance prepared scheme of removal, marking equipment in the future location:





The morning political information bore fruit, the equipment was handled most gently (Thanks to Oleg):





Meanwhile, the racks are rapidly emptying.





Movers carefully transferred everything to the car body, and at some point everything turned out to be immersed. Going to the car, I was a little puzzled, puzzled, or amazed. Almost "Persian" carpet met me on the floor in a truck, mattresses were visible on the sides, blankets were noticeable. Probably for the entourage - I thought. At the base of the body there was a disassembled set of upholstered furniture, almost a house on wheels, we laughed and thought between ourselves, the dwelling of movers.

Please do not judge for this sarcasm. My heart was warming only, that according to the conditions of transportation in the cockpit there will be a representative of the data center, who will control that our Gazelle will not become the future winner of the rally St. Petersburg - Dakar!









In 2 hours, the process of dismantling and packing was safely completed and, accompanied by a Linx representative, the train machine slowly moved into the data center. As I was later told, it would be possible to put a glass of wine , there is no wine after the move, a glass of water and not a single drop would have spilled, so the cargo was carefully carried.

According to plans, by 10 am the next day, the Linx duty shift was to install everything, the switching and connection process was taken on their shoulders. But Chuyka said that there may be questions and you need to go to help, so it happened later. Therefore, after the precious machine, we too began to move.

Whether the weather was on our side, but along the way it was literally clear that not only the equipment, but also we all go to the CLOUD, or already to them.



Upon arrival at the Linx data center, we were waited with open- handed doors. Take a closer look, at the end of the corridor you can see pallets with equipment.



Close-up:





And the process of reverse assembly was already boiling, again, the prepared layout scheme in racks was useful, although there were minor inaccuracies that were promptly eliminated.





Meanwhile, the garbage was growing ...



At the moments when there was a free minute, it was necessary to maintain the New Year's atmosphere, they built a pyramid (the wrong pyramid)



Without a scheme, nowhere.



Mostly needed brute force



And the final shape already loomed





Meanwhile, the garbage was growing by leaps and bounds ...



Blade prepared shells



And finally:



The move itself, dismantling, assembly, cross-over took 2 days. (Thanks to the considerable help of the Linx staff, there was nothing to complain about in this regard, it was possible to find fault with their canteen, but this is not the subject of the current story). Although I will describe one drawback, I did not find in the machine room for personal protective equipment (Take an example from Xelent).
Engineers were on top. The lion's time to restore the health of all services was taken by post switching operations, checking SAN switching logic, checking skhd, LAN networks, and all services, and services. some operations lasted until January 7th (But the operability of the main services was provided by January 5th.

From myself I want to thank the Linx employee Oleg, colleagues Alexander, Dima, Kohl. And Alexander, who visited the data center with me almost every day from the 2nd to the 7th of January)

PS In the process of moving, only one server suffered, but as my colleague says, about the greatest likelihood of a light bulb failing - when it was turned on, it probably turned out the same with one server.

PPS Thank God, the first working day with servers located tens of kilometers from the office, passes without a hitch. Ugh ... Ugh ...

Nearly 1000 users are working, not particularly suspect about the huge work done.