Datacenter Migration
Twenty-five banks moved to a new datacenter, without a minute of downtime.
1,480servers moved, AIX and x86
233,881test cases run
Zerodowntime, and no regulatory breach
The problem
The datacenter hosting 25 banks on a SaaS banking platform was closing, and the site had to be vacated. Moving straight to the public cloud proved impossible: the shared setup was too complex and too many parties had to agree.
The new plan was a fresh datacenter in Zürich with disaster recovery in Ticino, moving every bank while their banking kept running.
The idea
1PlanOne migration design for every bank, covering AIX and x86.
2PackageThe work cut into more than 150 migration packages, each with its runbook.
3ProveEvery package tested before and after the move.
4MoveBank by bank, in sprints, until the old site was empty.
What was built
- The migration design. One strategy for all clients and both server platforms, owned end to end.
- Datacenter and carrier selection. Carrier-neutral colocation providers in the Zürich region evaluated, such as Equinix, Green and Interxion / Digital Realty. Network carriers chosen from Swisscom, Sunrise, BT, Orange Business and Colt, together with the hardware suppliers.
- The network between sites. Dedicated, highly available lines between Zürich and Ticino for migration and operations.
- Agile migration teams. Architects and experts for compute, network, databases and monitoring, run in sprints with risk reporting.
- 150+ runbooks. Solution documents, runbooks and plans for every migration package.
- Everyone aligned. Banks, network providers, procurement, the security officer, data officers and programme management.
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