Service
Rack relocation and deracking
Moving cabinets rather than a whole facility. We assess whether a populated move is viable, survey the route at both ends, and move the rack or strip it, depending on what the building and the load will actually allow.
Not every move is a migration. Often it is a handful of cabinets going to another floor, another building or a colocation hall, and the question that decides the whole job is a narrow one: does the equipment travel in the rack, or does the rack get stripped first?
Get that right and a rack move is quick, because every device that stays mounted is a device nobody has to reconnect, relabel or re-identify at the far end. Get it wrong and you find out in a goods lift, with a loaded cabinet that is heavier than the lift is rated for and a building manager watching.
We answer that question with a survey rather than an opinion, and then do the work either way: populated move, deracked move, or a mix where the heavy and the fragile travel separately.
What decides whether a populated move is viable
These are the six things we check before anyone commits to a method. Any one of them can rule a populated move out on its own.
01
The cabinet itself
Not every rack is built to be moved loaded. Frame rigidity, base construction and whether it was designed with transport castors decide whether the cabinet will hold its geometry with several hundred kilograms inside it.
02
Load and weight distribution
Total weight matters, and so does where it sits. A rack loaded top-heavy behaves very differently on a ramp or a threshold than the same weight low in the frame.
03
Floors and lifts
Point loading on raised floor, lift car capacity, door dimensions and any weight limit on the route. A goods lift rating is a hard number, and it is not negotiable at 6am on a Saturday.
04
The route
Door widths, thresholds, ramp angles, corner radii, kerbs and the tail-lift at the vehicle. We walk the whole path at both ends, measured, before the method is agreed.
05
What is mounted in it
Spinning disks, tape libraries and anything with a fragile rail mount change the calculation. Some equipment should come out regardless of what the cabinet could survive.
06
Vendor and warranty terms
Some hardware warranties have conditions about how equipment is transported. Worth reading before the move rather than during a warranty claim.
Populated move, or derack?
Moving the rack populated
The cabinet travels with equipment mounted. Faster at both ends, far less reconnection, and the internal cabling and layout arrive intact, which removes most of the opportunity for error.
- Shorter outage window
- No re-racking or re-identification at the far end
- Internal cable management preserved
- Needs the right cabinet, route and load to be safe
Deracking first
Equipment is removed, packed and moved separately, and the cabinet travels empty or is replaced. Slower and more work at the destination, but it is the right answer whenever the route, the load or the hardware says so.
- Works where lifts, floors or routes will not take the load
- Individual protection for fragile or heavy devices
- Natural moment to retire equipment and tidy cabling
- Requires disciplined labelling and a photographic record
How a rack move runs
Survey both ends
Cabinet, load, floor, lift, route and destination position, measured rather than estimated. This is where the method gets decided.
Record the state
Serial numbers, rack elevation and a photographic record of every cabled face before anything is touched, so the far end can be rebuilt exactly or verified against what left.
Prepare the destination
Floor position marked, power and containment confirmed, and patching pre-built where we can, so the cabinet lands into a ready space rather than an empty one.
Shut down and disconnect
Powered down in the agreed sequence, disconnected and labelled, with the asset list scanned out of the source room.
Secure the load
Equipment restrained or removed, doors and side panels secured, the cabinet braced for travel, and transport castors or skates fitted for the route.
Move
Through the surveyed route with the crew and gear the survey called for, onto air-ride transport where the journey is by road, monitored in transit.
Position and reinstate
Levelled and secured in the marked position, equipment refitted if it travelled separately, repatched to the recorded elevation and powered up in sequence.
Verify and hand over
Services checked against the agreed list, exceptions logged and closed, and an updated elevation, patching schedule and asset register issued.
Common questions
Can a server rack be moved with the equipment still in it?
Often, yes, but it depends on the cabinet, the total load and how it is distributed, the lift and floor ratings on the route, and what is mounted inside. We survey those six things before committing to a method rather than deciding on the day.
How heavy is a populated server rack?
It varies enormously with what is in it, which is exactly why the number has to be established for your cabinets rather than assumed. The figure that matters is not just the total, it is whether that total is within the lift, floor and threshold limits on the actual route.
What is deracking?
Removing equipment from the cabinet so it can be packed and transported separately, with the rack moved empty or replaced. It is slower and means re-racking at the far end, but it is the correct method whenever the route or the load rules out moving the cabinet loaded.
Can you move racks between floors or buildings on the same site?
Yes, and those moves still get the same survey. A move of thirty metres through a goods lift can be more constrained than a move across the city, because the lift is a fixed limit and a truck is not.
Do you move a single rack, or is there a minimum?
A single cabinet is a normal job. The survey, the record-keeping and the reinstatement work the same way whether it is one rack or twenty.
What if we are moving the whole room?
Then it is a migration rather than a rack move, and it needs an audit, a runbook and a plan for the room you are leaving. That is covered on our data centre migration page.
Got cabinets to move?
Tell us what is in them and where they are going. We will survey the route, tell you whether they travel loaded, and price it.
Talk to us about a move