The challenge
A network upgrade lives or dies on the day itself. The data centre gives you a window, a bay and a set of escorts. Nobody wants to spend that window cutting open cartons, sorting rails and sweeping up foam.
This client was upgrading its network across two London data centres. More than 20 routers and switches were going in, and 22 of them were Juniper MX204s. Every one of them had to arrive in the right place, with the right mounting kit, and leave no mess behind.
There was also a stock question. With that many units, you need to know exactly which box went where. A missing rail kit on site costs more time than the whole trip.
Our approach
We did the heavy lifting before install day. The routers came into our warehouse, which runs full inventory control and a warehouse management system.
Then we de-boxed them. The mounting kits were pre-installed on every unit, so the engineers would not be fitting rails at the rack face. Each router went into a flight case, ready for the short trip from our warehouse to the sites.
Flight cases matter more than they sound. They protect the kit, they stack neatly, and they mean no cardboard or packing materials get taken into the data centre. That keeps the white space clean and the escort happy.
On the day, a couple of our engineers took the cased kit to the two London data centres and installed it. They were not working out what was in which box. They were racking.
Today we do this work in a dedicated caged pre-staging area with two 42U racks. This job came before that was built, but the method was the same: build and check off site, move it cased, rack it on site.
The result
All 22 Juniper MX204 routers were installed across the two London data centres. The units arrived de-boxed, with mounting kits fitted and nothing left in cardboard. The engineers' time on site went on installation, not unpacking.
