Is the ‘decommissioning team’ the place to be?

I was having a chat with a friend who works in the data center management team for one of the banks in Canary Wharf. We’ll call him Mike. Anyway, I was asking him how things are going and the following conversation arose, I’ve noted down our conversation as he bought me dinner, Mike’s replies are indented.

So what’s going on this week?  (I ask)

Well a number of things, I’ve got the new servers coming in, as well as what we call production activity, this is the day to day management of the data center, looking at what’s where, how we can be more efficient with the power and space, the moves to our bcp site, as well as the decommissions.

Explain your key tasks this week

I’ve got 16 servers coming in, all of which need space to be allocated in our data center. As part of that we need to ensure that the cabinet locations they are being installed in having the relevant KVM or console connections, as well as the support for any SAN, network and lights out connections they need. Some of the external applications have specific requirements, like a leased line to a market or site, they need allocated a cabinet that supports that kind of connection, or can be fitted out as needed. We also have to manage the market data feeds, market data equipment and accommodate their needs - they tend to be a bit more time and change sensitive than the production teams simply because of the nature of market data. I also have to do the weekly data center utilization report, how much power and space we have left, what came in and what’s left this week, the how many servers/watt in, and server/watt out we had for the management team.

How much does decommissioning play in your role?

We manage the data center angle of it. By that I mean schedule the hardware engineers to unrack the server, liaise with the recycling/disposal company to collect the equipment, reclaim the power and space as part of this. It’s part of our workload, but not as much as it should be. By that I mean we’re dealing with projects and existing production requests - “I need to install 12 DL380G5’s” or “14 blades”; to the typical kind of calls for “KVM not working”, or the networks team needing to replace a switch and needing access to the data center with the equipment.

I’ve heard about the concept of a decommissioning team, what’s your view?

It could be very good, but it’s one of those things that needs to be done in the right way and linked with the teams involved. I’d be reluctant to have a new team created just to create another team. However, if we could have one or two guys from the networks/storage/patching and server teams with a data center guy, we could be much more efficient in the way we decommission systems. Take a more managed approach, someone to focus on the ‘remove servers….’, re-claim these SAN and networks cables, mark the  cabinet space as free, so that I can take a more managed approach to data center management. I can think of at least three rows of cabinets I want to replace, it’s not a money thing so much as a time thing. I know we’ve got servers coming out of individual cabinets in that rack, but it would be great if we could be told what’s coming out and when, to be able to plan the decommissioning process more so that we can move equipment around to meet the business need.