Alabanza Data Center Migration

A status report on the Alabanza data center migration

As you know, in early November, services to many of our Alabanza customers went down during the data center migration from Baltimore to our Andover facilities. These services have now been fully restored, and the migration has been completed. We have also conducted an internal review of the migration and wanted to take this opportunity to provide you with more details by responding to some of the questions that have come up.

Why migrate to our Andover data center?

The goal of the data center move was to migrate the Alabanza customers to a new, state-of-the-art platform—replacing legacy equipment that was in place in Baltimore. NaviSite made significant investments to refresh and update the underlying server infrastructure in its Andover data center in anticipation of the migration event. The platform is built upon cutting edge technologies including SUN virtualization hardware with VMware and EMC storage area networks. The environment is designed to dramatically improve scalability, reliability and flexibility to achieve our goal to create an elastic computing environment. A welcome side benefit, given NaviSite’s commitment to the Green Grid initiative, is that the new infrastructure is also more environmentally friendly, consuming substantially less power.

How was the migration planned?

The migration was preceded by two months of planning, which included a series of meetings, conference calls and emails with many Alabanza customers who were kept informed about the migration to the new platform. In consultation with these customers and based on technical assessments, the migration of the majority of the data was planned to be done virtually by transferring it through a high-capacity dedicated circuit. The remaining servers would then be physically transported from Baltimore to the new Andover center.

What happened?

First of all, the electronic transfer of the data did not progress as quickly as initially estimated. As a result, a number of synchronization errors were generated. Compounding matters, additional issues related to network capacity developed due to name-server and ARP requests. NaviSite was continually assessing the situation during the migration process to determine the best course of action. At the time, the technical team believed the most expeditious method for getting customers back online was to complete the migration. No one anticipated that the migration would take as long as it did.

Who was impacted?

The migration impacted the Alabanza reseller/business customers and the end-users to whom they had sold services to, and approximately 7,000 direct customers of Alabanza sub-brands whose data were being migrated from Baltimore to the new platform in Andover, Mass. The migration did not affect any other NaviSite customers across its existing network of 16 data centers nor were any customers in Andover impacted.

What did NaviSite do to fix the situation?

During the migration process, NaviSite mobilized technical and support personnel from offices throughout the U.S. and India to focus on the completion of the migration with round-the-clock coverage and opened up multiple channels of communication for the impacted customers. Global technical resources were placed on a 24x7 work schedule to assist in the migration. NaviSite also deployed numerous non-technical personnel to answer incoming calls from customers; continuous updates were posted on the NaviSite Web site; while the management team was directly involved in coordinating and completing the migration effort across core functional areas.

What is the current status of the migration?

The data center migration process is now complete and services restored for all sites. Some customers may experience intermittent ARP issues, but the network core is stable, and most customers are reporting improved performance. Most customers have been upgraded to the new Sun/VMware environment and those who remain on the previous Dell platform will be upgraded in the near future at a time of their convenience.

Is there any remediation plan?

NaviSite is committed to working with affected customers to accommodate the interruption of service related to the migration. As part of that commitment, NaviSite will be honoring all contractual obligations with those customers.