We successfully moved one of our major properties to a new colocation facility over the weekend. This is the 12th such move I've made over my storied carrier ... and if you count all those microsites, it's more like 40. I truly hope this is the last such time I get involved with such a move. They are a lot of work and while it is very satisfying to see so many people working together for a common and tangible purpose, in the end it's just a lot of work with dubious business value. After doing 6 or 8, they start to loose their charm.
This one wasn't as dramatic as renting jets and flying sites across the country and wasn't as easy as a local in place migration. In fact, this was just details: we setup all new equipment, configure it, load data, make sure all our operational processes are in place and move traffic from the old place to the new. Details. Lots and lots of details but no rocket science.
We did learn a lot about the sites tho. It's a bit like moving to a new house: you find all this old stuff you haven't used for years. Do you bring it with you or throw it away? And you do get a fresh start in a clean house. We did get a much better understanding of some things that have grown organically over the years. We need to take this understanding and turn it into actionable follow up items to clean up some cruft that came along. We have the potential to make some dramatic improvements and simplifications that will lead to services that are easier to support, grow and enhance. But the window for those improvements is narrow. Will we move thru it?
Well, one nice thing: years from now when I'm sitting round the table drinking coffee in the local cafe with all the other geezers, I can tell them all about these moves. Over and over again I can tell them. "I remember back in Ought-Six when we moved the 10th largest internet site to Tornado Alley ...."