Since Jason just posted a photo dump of pics, hopefully I can expand on the events of recent, with some new pics as well.

January 4th: Around 5pm
We begin the relocation by shutting all systems to be moved…and as a show of power, every desktop on the network.(We had a real reason, just some sensationalism)

After everything had been powered down as needed, naturally it was time for a break.

 Now on to the work. There were several reasons for our move. We were growing to big for our current space, our servers were just stacked on top of one another, our backup situation needed help, and it was in a remote part of the building.

After the taco bell settled we started disconnecting the servers and sorting the cables. I documented the process while Jason handed heavy things to Jim.

  As I mentioned before once we got the servers moved we had to sort out some cabling.

The move was on. When I said that our servers were stacked on top of each other there was a system of separating the physical boxes. Here is a shot of our previous rack system.

On to the Datacenter! We prepared for our move by putting the rails in the rack so we could get the servers in quickly. Here we are putting in the first server.

One server down, now its time for a break! We just happened to get a special visit from our favorite CFO Linda. She knew we would be working hard so she brought us some treats.

After that short interlude it was back to the servers. We happened to look at the server we just loaded and realized it wasn’t correct, so we did it again.

The rest of the move went pretty well. No large hurdles, a snag or two maybe. We were able to get everything up and running. We had a little pool between us as to what time we would finish. Jim had 10pm I had 12am and Jason had 2am. While there was some controversy involving certain parties ‘padding’ the time, our finish up time happened to be somewhere between 4 and 4:30 am making us all losers. Here are a few final pics of the move.

After some cleanup were were ready for the week. It’s been a long process, starting back in October, but it feels good to have it completed. Particularly because two days after our move, 35 Church IT guys from all over the country converged on Northwoods for Sharepoint Training.

It has been a whirlwind. Things around here just haven’t stopped lately. Between the phone system move, data center stuff, the christmas production and closing up end of the year things there hasn’t been a dull moment and the days have been long. Here is a snapshot of things happening.

 As you may have seen on Jason’s blog we recieved our new racks and promptly starting filling them up. First with the move of the phone system.

While the phone guys were working their fingers off, we decided to start moving what other equipment we could.

Once we got the core switch(HP 5406zl) in and wired up the phone guys were ready to move our T-1. (Note: Rememer when VLANing that switch port numbers do not increase linearly)

We got the T-1 and our firewall and VPN moved all at the same time and wired up and ready to go.

 When we ordered our battery backup from APC This is not at all like I expected.

The phone guys were then able to proceed through each extension and getting it punched down in the new rack. Looks much neater now.

Once the phone guys had finished, I took a moment to examine the cable they had removed from our previous location.

With all this excitement stress levels can run high, Jason came to the rescue with a great Christmas gift. R/C Helicopters!

Once we had relieved our stress with some pilot action, I was on my way to a rehearsal for our Christmas production and noticed that our lobby was now a park…with an ice rink!

And to end things out we had finagled a couple pans of brownies out of some co-workers but our second pan must have been rushed out of the oven because it was not finished. This is Jason spreading the middle like butter. There are however some who think this is how brownies should be…those people are wrong.

 Things have definitely been crazy round here lately, but the mood is good. Christmas is my favorite holiday and this is shaping up to be a good one.

 I was doing some work in our server room today and a quick glance revealed to me one of the reasons we are in the middle of our relocation.

 I may not remember correctly, but I thought that 80 degrees was on the high side of the scale for your server room.

 The move is on!

I happened to notice that Jason Lee hadn’t posted on his blog about our newest project. We are relocating our server room. Things are just starting, we happen to have two of the best cable pulling machines you can find, their names are wayne and jim. They have gotten all the conduit/fiber pulled already! Currently the HVAC guys are putting in our cooling system. We are on a very tight time schedule so things will be moving forward quickly. Stay tuned for the updates.