In-Depth
Tales from the Trenches: Growing Pains
The next time your company plans a move, you just might want to consider a change in careers.
- By Chris Brooke
- October 01, 2000
I generally consider myself a pretty lucky guy. I’ve
got a great career that I’m good at, a beautiful wife,
and two wonderful kids (OEM with the wife), and one more
on the way! And until recently I was also lucky enough
to have always worked on either a pre-existing network
or one that was built from scratch for a new company.
Hence, I’ve never had to go through the pains of moving
a LAN (complete with a DMZ of www, ftp, dns, and smtp)
from one location to another. Never, that is, until now.
If you’ve been through this, you know exactly whereof
I speak (can I get an amen?). If you haven’t, heed closely
my advice, lest ye be subjected to the flagellations I’ve
been forced to endure these past few months. Indeed, no
move will ever be completely glitch-free, due to reasons
that shall soon be apparent. Nevertheless, it’s my sincere
hope that you’ll find in these pages sage counsel upon
which to construct a checklist of do’s and don’ts (or
as a former math teacher of mine used to say: “Uh-Huhs
and Uh-Ohs”), should relocation be in your future.
Let’s Begin at the Beginning
Several months ago we realized that our current accommodations
were simply no longer adequate. We were “living” in an
office space of approximately 1,200 square feet, which
at one time (long, long ago, when our U.S. office consisted
of only six people) was more than sufficient. Fortune
has smiled on us though, and we’ve recently grown to more
than 14 full-time employees, with more on the way. When
you consider that we often have personnel from our U.K.
office visit for days at a time as well, it’s easy to
see why there are times when it’s elbow to elbow.
Whenever you move an office from one place to another,
you inevitably face many challenges, not the least of
which are IT considerations. Nevertheless, today we’re
going to focus only on the IT (and related) Uh-Huhs and
Uh-Ohs.
Challenge No.1: Move LAN and DMZ to New
Location
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Well, it is… in
theory. Since we needed to keep our existing network up
and running until the actual move, we acquired a new range
of IP addresses for our new DMZ. (Our internal LAN uses
private IP addresses, so at least we didn’t have to worry
about allocating addresses for our internal hosts. Thank
goodness for small favors!)
Consistent with our growth, we decided to have our ISP
allocate a subnet of 128 addresses, which we would then
subnet down to our DMZ and external “point-of-entry.”
(With IPv4 still being stretched way beyond what was ever
intended, we couldn’t really justify an entire Class C
space. When-oh-when will the promised IPv6 arrive?) We
also decided that (since, after all, we’re growing and
everything) we should bump up our bandwidth. We turned
what was only (only?!) a T1 line into a flex DS-3 (T3—45Mbps
max!) with a shadow T1 for fail-over support… just in
case. After all, increased bandwidth enhances the customer
experience, right? Never mind that now when I download
beta updates from Microsoft, the process is so fast that
they arrive before they’ve left!
As I’ve said, in theory the process is simple: Get the
new IP address range, configure the external network at
the new office, and everything’s cool, right? Right?!
Wrong!
Uh-Oh No. 1: Get Circuits Installed by
ISP/Telco
If you think that the Department of Justice possibly
breaking up Microsoft is a good thing, just remember what
happened a few years ago when they broke up the phone
company into all the little “baby bells.” Now, in order
to get any data service installed, you must go through
at least two and up to four or five different companies:
the local telco, since it owns the “local loop”; your
ISP, whose role is usually “middleman;” the network backbone
providers, which may or may not be wholly-owned subsidiaries
of the ISP (and even if they are, it doesn’t make the
process any smoother!); and other “middle-men,” depending
on how big your ISP is. The process usually works something
like this:
- Meet with the ISP to discuss
your data service requirements. The ISP may even
offer combined data and voice services at a discounted
price to make it “easy” to set up and maintain. It won’t
be, but the savings may make it worthwhile to go with
the package nonetheless.
- Have the ISP schedule the install.
This includes scheduling the local loop install from
the telco. This part actually seemed to go rather smoothly
until I received a call from the telco technician stating
that he was in our new office and the conduit hadn’t
yet been run from the office space to the phone room!
A quick check of the build-out schedule confirmed that,
yep, no conduit was due to be installed until the following
week, which is the date I gave the ISP. Somehow this
got lost between the scheduling department of the ISP
and the telco.
- Re-schedule the installation
of the circuits. Even though you should (in a
perfect world) be dealing only with your ISP for scheduling,
you’ll end up having to talk to the telco in order to
ensure that the installation takes place on the correct
date. In our case, the correct date came and went without
incident… at least for the shadow T1. When they came
to install the DS-3, they informed us that the building
didn’t have sufficient fiber coming in to support a
T3. We were told that it would take 30 to 45 days for
the telco (Oh, no! Not the telco!) to run new circuits
to the building. After many threats, pleas, and “We’ll
get a new ISP,” we decided to use the shadow T1 as our
main data line until the DS-3 could be installed. (At
this point, I was praising the IT gods that we had decided
to put the shadow T1 in the budget in the first place—it
had just become our lifeboat!)
Uh-Oh No. 2: Get LAN and DMZ Configured
Since we knew that we’d have to build our new network
on site and have it up and running before we shut down
the old one, we arranged sufficient time in the build-out
schedule (one week) to allow for delivery, installation,
and configuration of our IT infrastructure. On the pre-determined
date, we arrived at our new office with several servers,
routers, switches, hubs, and sundries, only to be told
that the electronic door locks hadn’t arrived, and the
office space wasn’t secure. Even though our office building
wasn’t located in any sort of “high crime” area, we decided
to err on the side of prudence and take everything back
to our “old” office. This had the effect of making things
even more crowded, but at least there was a lock on the
door!
The door locks were installed the following day and we
began to move equipment over and build our new domain.
The new domain, of course, needed to co-exist with our
current domains, so trusts were established, Exchange
data was transferred, and user accounts were created for
existing employees in the new domain. We also had to build
our DMZ, which meant setting up www, ftp, dns, and smtp
servers; copying existing data; and updating primary DNS
servers to point to the new DMZ instead of the old one.
Since it can take up to 72 hours for the DNS entries pointing
to our old IP addresses to expire, and we absolutely had
to vacate our “old” office within four days, getting the
DMZ up was a priority. (Tip:
Always leave a “buffer zone” between occupying a new office
and vacating the old one, just in case!)
Challenge No. 2: Get Phone System Transferred
The reason I mention this is because a) our phone system
is a PRI voice T1 and switch (enough to make a seasoned
tech-head drool!); b) I’m betting that many of you out
there work for companies that don’t have separate telecom
geeks, and hence you are the de facto phone system experts
in your organization (reason enough to be prepared for
potential glitches); and c) it represents a potentially
major Oh-Uh during any office move!
To be fair, the phone system move was probably one of
the smoothest aspects of moving to our new office. Getting
everything ready for the phone move was the nightmare.
The most significant hurdle was keeping our existing “published”
phone numbers. We went round-and-round with the phone
company, including another bout of threats, pleas, and
“We’ll just get another phone company.” Finally, the issue
was resolved and we figured out a way to keep our existing
numbers. (The actual process seems to involve routing
them through NASA launch system computers and via top-secret
military satellites. I think there’s a slight possibility
that we may have a disruption of service during periods
when the space shuttle is in orbit.)
As I said, moving the switch and turning up the circuit
went surprisingly well. Better, in fact, than when we
initially had the system installed in the “old” office
several months earlier. We checked, rechecked, then did
it all again. I left the office sometime after midnight
on that Friday. Considering that I was leaving for the
airport the following day at 5:20 a.m. for a previously
scheduled vacation, I felt lucky that we were able to
get everything done.
Uh-Oh No. 3: Get Users on New Domain
The good news was that we had finished the move on June
30, just in time for the four-day Independence Day weekend.
And vacation or no, I knew I’d start getting calls Wednesday
morning from frustrated users. Considering how big of
an Uh-Oh this could have been, I was surprised by how
smoothly it went. Make no mistake… I did get calls, but
most dealt with getting users getting Windows 2000 Pro
laptops (that they took home over the weekend and we didn’t
get a chance to pre-configure) to join the new domain.
Of course, once we successfully migrated them into the
new domain, I was immediately besieged with calls of “What
the heck happened to my emails, documents, and desktop
settings?!.” (Tip: If any
of your users use Windows NT or 2000, prepare them for
the fact that there will be some reconfiguring. After
all, they are joining a whole new domain!)
Uh-Oh No. 4: Clean Up the Mess
I know I promised to focus only on IT issues, but this
last point really bears mentioning. Although we had pre-moved
most of the computer equipment, the office furniture was
another story. We decided to hire a moving company that
promised to box everything up, move it to the new office,
and lovingly unpack it. (Tip:
Get a referral from someone you trust before hiring a
moving company.) When I arrived back from my vacation,
the office looked like the moving company had scooped
everything up with bulldozers at the old office, delivered
it to the new office in a truck with pogo sticks instead
of wheels, and (literally) dropped it off at the new location!
I still haven’t found the power supply for my KVM switch,
so my desk looks like a monitor farm.
Moving into a larger office space can be great for morale.
It means that the company is doing well. It also means
that people get more personal space (at least for a while).
And in spite of all the Uh-Ohs, I think the experience
has been mostly positive. When the time comes for you
to expand into larger accommodations, just remember to
plan, plan, plan. Then make sure you remember that nothing
ever goes as planned.