Do you find yourself needing to redo, relocate, and renovate your data center? Perhaps as  part of a disaster recovery incident? Or maybe you are executing an org-wide migration to the cloud. Your goals in any data center decommissioning process are to keep your data secure, to complete the project efficiently, and to overcome all the inherent complexities of handling your organization’s data.

Many supervisors also prefer to report savings of time and money during the decommissioning process, especially when their asset recovery includes equipment removal, asset disposition, and data destruction.

A structured approach to leveraging your retired equipment will help you avoid losses. Use this data center decommissioning guide to keep ahead of the pitfalls and money sinks that come with the nature of the project.

Here are 5 steps for decommissioning any data center through capacity planning, equipment removal, data destruction (through secure software), and asset recovery. Follow these steps to increase your ROI while practicing responsible recycling and asset reselling.

Let’s begin with how to power down a data center and create an asset guideline for your facility or building.

Decommissioning Your Data Center in 5 Phases

Part of the challenge of decommissioning a data center is the need for every step to be completed in a specific and conditional order, without overlooking any interdependencies. We simplify the data center decommissioning process through five phases:

Step 1. Power Everything Down

When you begin your data center decommissioning, first power down the facility. Cancel the flow of information leading to the servers and ensure the operation of storage devices and equipment is eliminated. To complete this process, you may want to create an asset inventory or map so you can take stock more easily in subsequent steps.

Make sure that the provider you select can back up and secure enterprise data, business data, and software licenses. This allows for the most minimal disruption of function during your digital transformation.

For example, during the decommissioning process, you might give a specific item number to each asset as you work toward powering them all down while preserving those that need to be protected, safeguarded, and transferred.

Step 2. Begin Recovery

While you are engaged in the hardware aspect of decommissioning, talk to your provider about rediscovering the value of your equipment. For valuable IT assets, your provider should sanitize the data on storage as part of their secure, destruction services. This kind of data protection is a key element to begin recovery.

Afterward, you can refurbish and recycle assets. You’ll earn a check (or write-off) once the process of decommissioning your data center is complete.

Step 3. Refurbishment

Many providers do not offer compliant data protection services to thoroughly perform the full suite of refurbishing and removal services. Before you hire them, check if they will remove your servers, wipe their information (to regulatory standards), and give you real value for the technology you are buying. With an appropriate quote that factors in data protection, you can then focus on generating ROI from your equipment resale.

Step 4. Reselling

After hazardous, sensitive information has been removed and your IT assets have been refurbished, you can start reselling them for their quoted price. As part of the center’s operational team, you’ll develop a process for reselling assets in a way that is both efficient and profitable. If you don’t have one of these processes, ask your provider or team if they already have regulations and guides for reselling assets.

A systematic approach to reselling IT assets will help you coordinate the close of your facility more smoothly.

Step 5. Coordination

When you have powered down, recovered, refurbished, and resold your IT assets, you are closing in on the end of the decommissioning cycle. If you have hired a competent provider, you will have saved time, conserved funding, and created a return on the original investment in the data center.

Your final task is to log the outcome and plan the next steps of the decommission. Internal and external audits will need these, and they will help prevent issues during relocation.

While you square away outcomes, you will also coordinate the packing up of your data center with your removal or relocation provider.

Lastly, you will update the finance and supervisory departments about the return you produced by refurbishing and reselling assets according to this guide.

Ensure that you tell your company about the success of this complex, essential project. The final check will be a testament to your contribution to advancing the mission of your company.

Why the DataKnox.io Method Works

While decommissioning a data center is complicated and costly, it comes with a few benefits — if you follow our five-phase process. These perks include the cutting of data security loose ends, increasing compliance with regulatory standards, and recovering costs.

DataKnox.io is prepared to be your expert in data center decommissioning because we offer all these benefits through our specialist and generalist experts. We help you get a return on dead assets through responsible recycling, refurbishment, and reselling. We recoup the cost of decommissioning through asset recovery and a proven process that gets our clients a return.

How Can I Learn More

To learn more about how to handle data center decommissioning, asset disposition, and equipment recovery, contact DataKnox.io. While we hope the steps above help you get started with removing equipment and shutting down a data center, we understand that the task can be difficult. We can guide you through each of these five stages with experience and expertise.

With our services, you can learn to increase your decommissioning ROI, and as we explain in our guide, we will help you to efficiently remove equipment, refurbish technology, and resell your assets, saving time and making profit along the way.

Avoid common mistakes during your data center decommissioning and generate a return on the original investment by using DataKnox.io for your next removal or relocation.