Background
A major UK broadcast and media organisation undertook a programme to rationalise its legacy infrastructure footprint as part of a wider shift toward cloud based platforms and services.
Historically, several systems supporting production and internal services had been hosted within a third party data centre in Slough. As workloads began transitioning to cloud platforms, the remaining infrastructure estate reduced significantly. Maintaining colocation space for a small number of systems was no longer economically efficient.
The organisation chose to relocate the remaining infrastructure to its Leeds office environment. The objective was to support ongoing services locally while reducing ongoing colocation costs and enabling a phased transition of workloads into cloud environments.
Sunspeed was engaged to manage the end to end relocation programme, covering infrastructure audit, migration preparation, technical design, and the physical relocation of equipment.
>25
Devices migrated.
The Requirement
Although the infrastructure footprint had reduced, the remaining estate still supported important systems and required a carefully planned migration to avoid disruption.
The scope included a number of enterprise storage and compute systems that needed to be relocated as intact platforms while preserving cabling integrity and configuration consistency.
The infrastructure being relocated included:
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PCA Rack – relocated as a complete rack unit containing approximately 16 devices
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Enterprise Storage Systems – 10 VNX storage devices
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SAN Switching Infrastructure – 2 SAN switches
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Associated power cabling to be recovered and transported
The migration required detailed planning across both the source data centre and the destination office environment to ensure compatibility of power, space and network connectivity before relocation.
0hrs
Unplanned downtime.
The Solution
Sunspeed delivered the project through coordinated workstreams covering infrastructure audit, migration preparation, technical design and physical relocation.
Infrastructure Audit
A detailed audit of the Slough data centre environment captured device inventory, rack layouts, connectivity and power requirements. This ensured the infrastructure could be accurately replicated at the destination site.
Migration Preparation and Technical Design
Sunspeed developed the migration plan and installation design for the Leeds office environment, including rack layouts, power validation and cabling identification to support efficient reinstallation.
Relocation and Installation
Sunspeed executed the relocation of the infrastructure, including transport of the PCA rack as a complete unit, VNX storage systems and SAN switches, alongside recovery of associated power cabling. Equipment was then rack mounted, connected and installed at the Leeds office according to the pre defined layout.
The Outcome
The relocation allowed the organisation to consolidate its remaining physical infrastructure within its Leeds office environment while reducing dependency on third party colocation facilities.
Key outcomes included:
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Successful relocation of enterprise compute and storage infrastructure
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Reduced ongoing data centre operating costs
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Localised infrastructure supporting operational systems during cloud transition
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A controlled and well documented migration process
By combining detailed infrastructure analysis with physical migration expertise, Sunspeed enabled the customer to continue supporting critical systems while progressing its wider cloud transformation strategy.
DISCOVER HOW WE CAN SUPPORT YOU
Sunspeed has been providing IT services for over 30 years. We are industry leaders in transformation projects such as Data Centre Relocations, and provide a comprehensive package of services to deliver you control of your physical IT infrastructure. Reach out today to discover how we can support you: