Data Centre Relocation Work

Allstar commenced preparation for the relocation of their office space and data centre from Macquarie Place. The first phase of the project was to build a new Australian ‘NODE’ site at Equinix, Alexandria. The second phase was the office relocation followed by the third phase which was to build a edundant ‘NODE’ site at Global Switch, Sydney. Once the two new NODE sites were operational the Data Centre located in Macquarie Place was ready to be decommissioned.

• Phase 1 – ALLSTAR provided a field team to populate 20 racks with new Allstar’s Responsibility infrastructure. This involved preparation of equipment to enter the data centre caged area, rack equipment, patch equipment and assist with carrier connectivity and testing.
• Phase 2 – as part of the office relocation to Bligh Street 5 racks of equipment was to be relocated to a smaller MCR. ALLSTAR were responsible for the audit of the existing data centre and capture detailed information of all existing core infrastructure equipment. This includes make, model, serial numbers, asset number, port mapping, and rack layout and position diagrams.The office relocation took place over one weekend. ALLSTAR provided Project Management, on-site coordination, field force and IT transport for all ICT equipment. The ALLSTAR Level 2 engineers decommissioned the core infrastructure, prepared for transport and then re-installed at the new MCR over a two day period.
• Phase 3 – to allow the final decommission of the Macquarie Place data centre Bloomberg built a redundant NODE site at Global Switch in Sydney. This site was populated with a mix on new and existing infrastructure and for a period a triangulated core MAN was implemented to allow transition of services. ALLSTAR provided a field team permanently on-site for two weeks to rack and stack, connect and patch all equipment based on detailed designs defining RU positions and rack layouts. There were 30 racks in total populated during this period.ALLSTAR provide support staff for testing connectivity and escorting other Bloomberg suppliers and carriers whilst they were in the caged environment. At the completion of this phase, the data centre at Macquarie Place was ‘turned off’.
• Project management for all the above stages of the project utilising Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK) methodologies.

ALLSTAR provide Level 1 and 2 field engineering for all Bloomberg locations across Australia, this includes the two NODE sites in Sydney, Bloomberg offices in other states and Bloomberg Client sites. ALLSTAR have inherent knowledge of the Bloomberg network, server environment and application, this knowledge and our working relationship with the international support teams and local Field Service Manager contributed to the success of this intricate and long term project.

The Client’s standard business operation continued uninterrupted during the entire period whilst ALLSTAR teamed with the project team to deliver the project on schedule, meeting the tight deadlines for operational cutover and make-good obligations of the redundant data centre.

ALLSTAR continue to support this environment on a 24/7 basis.