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 After 9 years of helping co-location customers move in, and of building over 600 web applications ourselves, we've learned a lesson or two. We've gathered a few tips together to build a good outline for planning your move into our facility. Although each customer has unique needs, we've found that following these steps eliminate the most common problems that occur in such a move. This, of course, is only a starting point for a complete move plan. Our staff of Engineers stands ready to help you build upon this plan to ensure that your move is seamless.
Tips for a Seamless Transfer to Our Co-location Facility
- Cancel your contract with your old provider. Most providers
require at least a written 30 day notice.
- Set the Time To Live (TTL) on any domain names that you are
moving back to a small number (an hour for instance). Most DNS
servers respond with a TTL of up to a week when answering DNS
queries. That means that visitors to your site may not be able
to see your new site at the new facility for as long as a week
after you move, regardless of the new settings on your DNS server.
By setting the TTL back to one hour, and letting it stay that
way for at least as long as the previous setting (i.e. if the
previous setting was one week, wait one week after setting it
back to one hour before moving), visitors will be directed to
the new site within an hour at the worst. Once you have moved,
you can set the TTL back to one week in order to reduce load on
the DNS server and to speed initial connections to your site.
- Contact OnRamp Access Engineering at 512.322.9200 to coordinate
the time you are arriving with your servers. Your Engineer will
confirm all special configuration needs prior to your moving so
that they will be ready when you arrive. Obtain IP numbers from
Engineering. Specify which IP(s) you will use for your gateway(s).
Give Engineer information on any domains you want us to serve
DNS for including all IP address mappings and reverse mappings
you desire.
- If you are going to use our DNS servers, once Engineering has
configured our servers to your specifications (initially mirroring
your current DNS configuration pointing at your old facility with
a short Time To Live), contact each domain’s registrar and
change your registration to use our servers as primary and secondary
DNS servers for that domain.
- We suggest running a HackerView
network security scan on your servers prior to moving in order
to get a “fresh start” in our co-location facility.
HackerView will test all of your IP numbered devices for over
1,000 vulnerabilities. We suggest running it both through your
current firewall configuration and with the firewall turned off
in order to test host level security. Try to install any needed
patches prior to moving if possible.
- If you will be using our DNS services, prior to moving your
servers, contact OnRamp Engineering to change DNS to your new
IP numbers. Schedule the change to happen at the time you are
shutting down the servers in the old facility.
- When you are ready to move, shut down your servers and change
DNS or have OnRamp change your DNS if appropriate.
- If possible, call us when you are on your way and we’ll
expedite your entry into your space. We have dollies, power drills
and a variety of other resources, sometimes even a hand or two,
to help you speed your installation.
- Once your equipment is installed, verify all connections. Specifically,
verify that your connection to our network is running as intended
(100 Mbps, Full-duplex for instance).
- Common problem areas for servers that have been moved are gateway
and DNS server settings, subnet masks and firewall configuration
issues. The data center’s Customer Resource Center has a
variety of adapters, pre-tested wires, tools, Internet connected
computers and other resources that can help if you are having
trouble. In addition, our personnel can easily move your connection
to different equipment in our data center if you want to insure
that you aren’t having interoperability issues with our
equipment. Please ask for help.
- Once everything is running well, change the Time To Live on
all DNS servers back to one week.
- Make sure to contact old DNS provider to have them remove their
DNS entries from their servers.
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