Data Center Decommissioning

“Broken Down in three Simple Steps”

Power System Services specializes in the Power Generation Industry. As back up power generators play a vital role to data centers across the globe, PSS offers project management capabilities of data center decommissioning projects.

Step one when the time comes to decommission your data center, begins by planning and discovering. It is important to have a clear understanding of all stakeholders and decision makers when assigning a project manager. With a detailed scope of work for all processes, safety procedures, and stages of removal and demolition in a place established, estimate of time and budget can be put into place. The network of tools needed vary from flat networks, virtualized environments, and proprietary databases. Physical discovery is conducting a physical audit and holding specialists accountable and double verify all inputs. Power System Services compiles a spreadsheet from the physical review to back your application and data. There will be many experts involved to review your process with such as developers, operators, users, and managers. Creating a point of contact list is essential for team members involved within the facility, especially if an error arises. Equipment and tools needed are fork lifts, drive shredders / degaussers, pallets and crates, foam packing, hoists, trucks, and tip guards.

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Step two involves the demolition stage. When all servers have been decommissioned, determining the final designation for all assets: repurpose, resale, recycle. All vendors with maintenance contracts and servers need to be contacted prior to demolition. Disconnect of equipment from the network happens prior to the removal of ACL's, subnets, and firewalls while cutting power to all equipment. After completing a rack tear down with the destruction issued for data security purposes we can finally move into the third step known as disposition. When it comes to packaging assets it's important for servers and other hardware to be packaged into cut-to-fit foam for shipping. To ensure software licenses are accounted for and recovered, correspond with a financial department for fixed assets to be removed from the books. As this is a brief description of Power System Services data center decommissioning process, there is extensive complexity in data centers today requiring a thorough approach. Looking at the big picture, following thorough the guidelines of regulations and recycling will save time and money for the customer with a safe approach.

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