Colo Exit on a Deadline: A DFW Cage and Rack Checklist

The renewal letter came, the cloud migration is nearly done, and someone decided not to sign another term. Now there’s a date on the calendar, and a cage full of servers, storage and switches that has to be empty by then.

Exiting a colocation footprint isn’t like clearing your own server room. The facility sets the rules: who gets in, when the dock is open, what paperwork a vendor needs. Miss one of those and you can lose an access window you won’t get back before the contract ends. This checklist is what we’d want every DFW tenant to work through before they call us. (When you’re ready for that call, our colocation decommissioning service page covers how we handle the removal itself.)

1. Get the real end date in writing

Start with the contract, not the calendar invite. Find out:

• The service end date and whether power and cross-connects stop on that date or before it.
• The notice period. Many colo agreements require written notice well ahead of the end of term. If notice is late, the term may renew.
• What “move-out” means in your agreement. Does the cage have to be empty, or empty and inspected? Who owns the cabinets, the PDUs and the cabling to the demarc?

Write the answers down where everyone on the project can see them. Most of the exits that go wrong go wrong here: the team plans to the last day of service and finds out the facility wanted the space clear and walked a week earlier.

2. Work back from that date

Once you know the real date, plan backward:

• Migration done and verified. Nothing gets powered off until the workloads it carried are confirmed running somewhere else and backups have been test-restored.
• Power-down. Leave a buffer for the one system nobody remembered.
• Removal window. Book it early. Freight elevators, docks and change-freeze periods fill up, and colo removals often end up on nights or weekends because that’s when the facility allows it.
• Final walk-through. Leave time to fix anything the facility flags.

For the removal itself, we can usually get it scheduled within a couple of days, and we work with the facility on approvals, security access and loading dock time. Call us as soon as you know the end date, not when you’ve finished the migration.

3. Sort out the facility paperwork early

Colo operators want to know exactly who is coming into their building. Expect to handle:

• Certificate of insurance (COI). Most facilities require a COI from each vendor, often naming the facility. Send us the facility’s requirements with your request and we’ll handle ours ahead of the removal window.
• Vendor authorization. You add us to your access list as your vendor, through the facility’s portal or ticket process.
• Escort and badge rules. Some sites escort every vendor; others issue temporary badges. Your team doesn’t need to be on site for the physical work unless you want to be, but you do need to authorize it.
• Dock and elevator bookings. Ask how far ahead these are booked and how long a slot lasts.

4. Know what’s yours and what stays

The facility owns some of what’s in your cage. Tenant-owned gear comes out; facility-owned infrastructure stays. Before removal day, mark which of these belong to you:

• Racks and cabinets (house cabinets stay)
• Rack PDUs and power whips
• Cabling to your demarc, patch panels and cable management
• Cross-connects (usually the operator’s, and usually ordered disconnected separately)

If you aren’t sure, ask the facility now, in writing. “We thought that was ours” is a bad conversation to have on the dock.

5. Decide what happens to the data

Every server, storage array and backup appliance in that cage has drives. Before anything leaves, decide:

• Which drives get sanitized and which get physically destroyed. Many teams sanitize by default and set aside a short list of media for destruction. Our data sanitization vs. physical destruction guide explains the difference.
• Whether destruction needs to be witnessed. We can scope on-site drive crushing if your policy needs drives destroyed before they leave the site. Plan it in advance, since it has to fit the facility’s rules and your access window.
• What paperwork you need for your files. We provide a serialized inventory and sanitization reports that can be checked later through Expunge Data. See data destruction documentation for what’s in them.

6. Make a simple inventory

You don’t need a perfect asset list to get a plan from us, but a rough one helps a lot: make, model and quantity of servers, storage and network gear, plus the cabinet count. A few photos of the cage and the rack fronts usually tell us more than a long description. Send them with your request.

7. Removal day

On the day, we work inside the facility’s rules: badge or escort, the dock slot you booked, and the floor protection or staging rules the site enforces. Tenant-owned equipment comes out, gets logged and goes on our own trucks. No freight brokers.

Is it free?

For most colo exits, yes. Removal is free for qualifying equipment, because servers, storage and network gear out of a colo cage usually have enough refurbishment and materials value to pay for the work. Free pickup starts at about 10 computers or network devices per site, and a cage of servers and switches is well past that. Unusual scope, like heavy non-IT infrastructure, is quoted before any work starts.

The short version

1. Confirm the real end date and notice terms in writing.
2. Plan backward from the date, with buffers.
3. Get COI, access and dock bookings moving early.
4. Agree with the facility on what’s yours.
5. Decide sanitization vs. destruction and what paperwork you need.
6. Send us a rough inventory and photos.

Facing a colo exit in Dallas, Richardson, Irving, Plano or anywhere else in DFW? Send us the facility name, cabinet count and end date and we’ll come back with a plan. For on-premises facilities, see our data center decommissioning prep guide.