Project Management Plan for Company Relo

200 PC's are a bit much to shift in one weekend, therefore your choices are somewhat limited.

I would recommend that you enable a temporary link between your existing office, and your new office. With that in place, you can start to shift your servers, and then relocate your data links to the remote sites.

This will ensure that your communications are not interrupted. Once the servers and data links have been moved, then you can start shifting the client workstations over.

I would under no circumstances consider shifting either the data links, or the servers during an evening. This will not provide you with sufficient time to resolve any issues you encounter, or to rollback should you need to.

Good luck

You might consider temporarily leasing some duplicate equipment so that you can have your network operational in various sites while some units are in transition.

When we moved our AS/400, we checked with IBM & our business insurance company, to make sure that our standard coverage also covered the move, and if not, what extra we needed. Well we needed a moving van company that was approved by IBM, and we needed the hardware packed up & unpacked by certified technicians, and we also had a problem of a union picket line that most reputable outfits refused to cross.

Hopefully the new building is wired properly for your latest technology - we are forever having to drill holes in concrete walls & look up manuals "How far should signal cable be separated from power line?"

Moving is an opportunity to make changes at the expense of the move.
Make a list of changes you would like to make. Probably physical placement and equipment access including plans for growth should be considered. Wiring for the future is probably the biggest bonus.
Most importantly, ask your users what changes they would like to see. Start by contacting managers by setting up a group meeting and ask for their cooperation. Subsequently they will involve their staffs. Those that don’t want to be bothered take particular note of and pass ideas from managers that openly get involved to managers too busy.
Think prevention and make a list of those changes that can be made under the auspices of a move that would improve performance. Broadcast the changes and be prepared for comments that can be incorporated before your final move. Everyone else will probably be thinking about his or her own move and getting them to think about IS&T related operations will make your move easier.

I think you've already received some excellent answers. I disagree with #1 only in that I think that a weekend migration of 5 servers and 200 workstations is entirely feasible if the network infrastructure is set up beforehand. However, more likely, you'll move department by department so the idea of a temporary link between the two buildings is sound.

Initially, you could move a BDC server to the new building and send mail, Web and Internet traffic across the temporary link. Then just begin migrating the servers, by function, and probably do some workstations at the same time.

In my experience, the biggest challenge is coordinating the movement of the WAN links.

paul

To build on answer #4: The Wan links are especially tricky. Two areas of concern:
1. Protocols, are your sure that FR (and IP) are all that you are using? No applications that use other protocols?
2. Is any of your server equipped with dail up connections that facilitate maintenance? The only way to find out is to contact your supplier.

Hi,

I work at a very large site, and we have a lot of turnover. We have done many moves of both lan rooms and masses of clients (although only once have I done both at once.

The biggest hitch is how much are you tied to static IP addressing? If you can impliment DHCP at the old site, you can make your life easier. Set up, check, and recheck the new site ahead of time. Watch your protocols! I have had one case where the new site did not have FDDI-SNAP to Ethernet_II set up, and it bit me for several hours.

We frequently move 200 or more clients at a time. The time-line is to uninstall everything on thursday, ship overnight, install on friday, checkout over the weekend, and business as usual on Monday.

Good Luck.