Position-level decommissioning across three data centers during a live cloud migration.

The challenge

Cloud migrations create a transitional period where legacy and new environments run in parallel. For Groupon, approximately 7,000 servers at each of three data centers, Sacramento, Dublin and Ashburn, needed to be decommissioned as workloads migrated, while remaining systems continued serving production traffic.

Equipment was not arranged contiguously. A single cabinet might contain servers at positions 17 and 39 that were clear for removal, while positions 12 and 28 carried live traffic. Every piece of equipment looked identical. As a publicly traded company with EU operations, Groupon required SOX compliance throughout and GDPR compliance in Dublin.

Our approach

We worked in close coordination with Groupon’s infrastructure team, receiving position-level clearance as each tranche of workloads completed migration. Technicians operated from detailed rack maps, verified before any disconnection. Each removal followed a documented sequence: verify position, photograph, disconnect power, disconnect network without disturbing adjacent ports, extract without contact with neighboring systems.

We coordinated across three time zones to keep all facilities moving within lease windows. The volume of identical equipment created a second consideration: protecting recovery value. When 21,000 servers of consistent make and model hit secondary markets simultaneously, pricing collapses. Our team monitored market conditions and staged releases across retail and wholesale channels, delivering recovery value that significantly exceeded an undisciplined approach.