Live blog: Moving an iSeries cross-city: Shipping doctors-to-be and loading ramps

Continuing the live blog of moving a Power 6 iSeries from a corporate data center to a vendor run outsourced data center on a cold Chicago Sunday morning.

The mover arrives at our facility about 4:00 AM with his daughter who’s in medical school in Chicago. It was hard getting help early Sunday morning (wonder why) so he recruited her.

So we have a future doctor moving our iSeries. I have a feeling this move would be more expensive if we did it in a few years.

It took about an hour to get the box on to the truck and shipped fifteen miles away.  As I mentioned in the last post, they bought six riders and made a moving path for the cabinet across our carpeted floor into the warehouse. So it wasn’t a hassle pushing that heavy box on the carpeting.

Clearance was a problem in two ways.

1. We taped the stablizer and PDU power cables on top of the cabinet. However, that raised the cabinet height just enough so that the cabinet couldn’t get out of the Computer Room. So we removed the extra equipment from the top of the cabinet and tossed that stuff into my car. Recommendation: Don’t try to piggyback other equipment on top of the cabinet. Many trucks have low clearance and a 7-ft cabinet may be all it can handle.

2. When the truck got to the vendor location, the dock was too high for the ramp on the back of the truck, and they weren’t able to get the machine into the facility. This left us with two choices: they could either elevate the truck with ramps to match the dock; or they could take the iSeries down the truck’s gate elevator and roll it into the facility. The trucking firm was hesitant to take it down the gate (more danger of falling). Luckily, they found two ramps that someone had left here. The movers backed the truck up on to the ramps, and the extra height was enough to make the truck’s gate even with the loading dock. Recommendation: if possible, get specs on the loading dock and the truck they are sending, to see if they will match.

So we’re sitting here at 5:00 AM – The production iSeries box is on site and being readied in the Staging Room to go on the floor.