Onramp Co-Location | Co-Location Moving Tips

After years of helping Co-location customers move in we've learned a lesson or two.  We've gathered a few Co-location moving tips together to build a good outline for planning your move into a new facility.  Although each customer has unique needs, we've found that following these steps eliminates the most common problems that occur in such a move. Of course, this is only a starting point for a complete move plan.  Our experienced Austin Co-location support team is ready to help you build upon this plan to ensure that your move is seamless.

1. Cancel your contract with your old provider.  Most providers require at least a written 30 day notice.
2. 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.
3. Contact OnRamp's Full7Layer Support team at 512.457.9000 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 OnRamp.  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.
4. If you are going to use OnRamp's DNS servers, contact each domain's registrar and change your registration to use our servers as primary and secondary DNS servers for that domain. 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.
5. 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.
6. When you are ready to move, shut down your servers and change DNS or have OnRamp change your DNS if appropriate.
7. 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.
8. 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).
9. Common problem areas for servers that have been moved are gateway and DNS server settings, subnet masks and firewall configuration issues.  OnRamp's Data Center 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 Austin data center if you want to ensure that you aren't having interoperability issues with our equipment.  Please ask for help.
10. Once everything is running well, change the Time To Live on all DNS servers back to one week.
11. Make sure to contact old DNS provider to have them remove their DNS entries from their servers.

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