Decommissioning goes wrong in predictable ways — a drive nobody logged, a licence that died with the hardware, a landlord billing for a rack left bolted to the floor. This is the order we'd do it in, written so you can hand it to whoever is actually doing the work.
Roughly a week of elapsed time for a small room, most of it waiting on other people rather than physical work.
The single most common failure is pulling a box that something quietly depended on. Check monitoring, firewall logs and switch port activity for anything still talking to each host. A server nobody admits to owning is usually still doing something.
Make, model, serial, service tag, rack position, and drive count per chassis. Photograph the front and rear of each rack before anything moves. This list is what you'll price against and what your certificate gets checked against. How to build the list.
Windows Server, VMware, database and backup licences may be bound to hardware IDs. Some transfer, some don't, some need releasing before the machine goes. Cancel support renewals too — paying maintenance on a decommissioned server is a bill that runs for years unnoticed.
Then verify them again by restoring something. A backup that has never been restored is a hope, not a backup. Keep it somewhere that isn't the room you're emptying.
Applications, then databases, then storage, then hypervisors, then network, then UPS. Leave each stage long enough to see what breaks. Label every cable you remove — if the move is to a new site, this is the difference between a day and a week at the other end.
Pull and log them, or confirm they stay in the chassis and are logged there. Include the ones people forget: cache modules, boot SSDs, SD cards in hypervisors, drives in the NAS nobody has looked at since 2019.
Decide whether drives are wiped, shredded, or shredded on-site in front of you. If anything is regulated or sensitive, on-site is the cleanest answer because nothing readable leaves the building. Which method suits what.
Racks, rails, PDUs, cable trays, patch panels, UPS units. Check your lease — many require the space returned as it was found, and an abandoned rack can cost more than the rack is worth. Note that UPS batteries are hazardous waste and can't go in a skip.
Servers, storage arrays and network gear from the last few years hold real value. Send the asset list for pricing before you commit to a disposal route, because the difference between scrap weight and resale is usually large.
Certificate of destruction, the asset list, the collection note and the settlement report. Store them with your compliance records, not in the departing engineer's inbox.
For a small comms room with a handful of servers, the physical work is usually a day. The whole project typically runs one to two weeks because of the waiting: confirming what still depends on each host, releasing licences, taking and verifying final backups, and scheduling collection. Larger rooms and data centre cages run longer, mostly for the same reasons.
Not if your vendor destroys drives as part of the service and documents each one. Pulling them yourself is worth doing if you want to keep physical custody until destruction, or if you want drives destroyed on-site while the chassis is sold on. What matters is that every drive is accounted for in writing either way.
Often yes, more than people expect. Enterprise servers, storage arrays and switches from roughly the last six years have an active resale market, and processors, memory and drives carry value even when the chassis doesn't. Equipment older than that is usually worth little beyond responsible recycling, but it costs nothing to have the list priced.
Yes. On-site destruction means drives are shredded or degaussed in your building, witnessed by your staff, and nothing readable leaves the premises. It's the usual choice for regulated data or when a security policy forbids removing live media. SF IT Recovery offers on-site shredding across South Florida.
Not general waste. Sealed lead-acid and lithium UPS batteries are hazardous waste and have to go to a permitted handler. Tell your disposal vendor they're in the load before collection day, because they affect how the vehicle is loaded and what paperwork is needed.
Send the asset list and we'll price it and schedule the lift. Free pickup across South Florida, statewide for larger jobs.