After weeks of careful planning, we’ve finally completed the move of our sister company from their old location to their new location, which is the neighboring office space adjacent to our building. The move entailed:
- setting up a new network infrastructure for them
- rolling out a new ESXi based Virtual Machine host
- rebuilding a new Active Directory infrastructure
- moving all their servers and workstations from their old domain to their new one
- deploying new production servers (VMs) onto their new VM host
- migrating and decommissioning some of their legacy servers
- implementing a disaster recovery plan
- deploying a Symantec backup exec server and Symantec anti-virus server
- replacing their 20-year old PBX with an Avaya IP Office 412 system
- porting all of their DIDs and toll free numbers to another carrier
- and setting up an IVR system
All in all the move was a success and the end users were able to get right back to the swing of things by the target date. There were some minor hiccups, but nothing we didn’t anticipate, and we were prepared with a back-up plan so as to avoid any unnecessary downtime. Now we’re just doing some clean up work such as adjusting group policies, updating DNS records, modifying firewall rules, fixing minor user profile issues, and documenting the new setup along the way.
With this company alone I’ve gone through three big network moves (office moves, data center moves), all within a 2 year timeframe, and with each move I’ve found that there is always something new to be learned- like how to do things more efficiently. Now it’s time to celebrate to the move’s success with good food and drinks- all on the company’s dime!
