Server and IT infrastructure migration to our Riga data centre

CloudHosting plans most migrations so that each system is down for an evening or a weekend window, not for days, because the copying and testing happen while the old environment is still serving users. The honest answer depends on two things: how much data has to be synchronised at the last moment, and how many systems have to be switched together because they talk to each other. During the survey we say which systems can move quietly on a working day and which ones need a proper window, and that goes into the plan you approve before anything starts.

CloudHosting moves servers you already own and colocates them in its Riga data centre from 40 EUR per 1U a month plus electricity by meter, arranging the transport, the rack, the power and the network. If the hardware is in reasonable shape, this is often the cheapest way to improve reliability quickly. We will also tell you when we think a machine is too old to be worth moving, for example when it is out of warranty and its disks are near the end of their life. Sometimes the right answer is a mix: the newer servers move as they are, the ageing ones are replaced during the migration instead of a year later under pressure.

CloudHosting keeps the old environment running and untouched during every cutover, so a failed switch ends in a rollback, not in a broken company. If a system does not behave as it did in the rehearsal and we cannot fix it inside the agreed window, we go back to the old one and reschedule instead of leaving people working on something half broken. It is a decision we take with you during the window, against criteria written down in advance, so nobody has to improvise at night. The rehearsal before the real switch is what makes this rare.

CloudHosting does not invoice the survey separately for a normal company setup: it is part of preparing the offer. What you get is worth having even if you then decide to stay where you are: an inventory of what runs where, the dependencies nobody had written down, and a plan with an order of moves and a rollback for each one. Larger or unusual estates, several sites or a system nobody in the company still understands, take real engineering days, and in those cases we agree a fee up front rather than padding it into the monthly price later.

CloudHosting works alongside a company's current IT provider during a migration and agrees in advance, in the plan, who does what in each window. It usually goes better that way: the person who has administered those servers for years knows things no survey will find in a day, and we would rather have them in the migration window than around it. The plan also says who has the final say if something has to be decided at two in the morning. If the relationship is ending, we can also take the handover from them and become the single point of contact afterwards.

CloudHosting plans the move around your old contract, and an overlap of a few months is often the comfortable case rather than a problem. The old environment stays where it is until the new one has proven itself, which is exactly the rollback we want anyway, so an overlapping contract buys you a safety margin instead of costing you. We plan the move so the paid period is used, not wasted. What does need checking early is the notice period and how the provider hands data back, because some want written notice months ahead and a few charge for the final export.

CloudHosting moves systems into the Tier 3+ data centre it runs itself at Bērzaunes iela 1 in Riga, Latvia, on its own network AS58269. Dedicated servers are also available in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The target platform is chosen per system during the survey: your own servers in colocation, our dedicated servers, virtual servers, or a mix. The Riga data centre is carrier-neutral and runs with N+1 power and redundant cooling; it is guarded, closed to visitors, and only a limited number of our own specialists have access. Your data stays in the EU.

CloudHosting moves systems off public clouds and other hosting providers the same way it moves them out of an office: survey, written plan, rehearsal, then a switch in an agreed window. Virtual machines are exported or rebuilt, databases are replicated or copied in advance, and DNS and address changes are prepared so users follow the switch without extra steps. What often changes most is the bill: a steady workload that runs all month can cost less on a dedicated server with a fixed monthly price than on metered cloud resources, and the survey shows whether that is true for yours.

CloudHosting gives you a written migration plan before anything moves: the inventory of servers and systems, the order of moves, the window for each switch, the checks that decide success and the rollback for every step. It also states who does what on your side and ours, who confirms each step, and the monthly cost of the new platform, so the decision is taken with the numbers in front of you. Nothing starts until you approve the plan. After the move you receive the documentation of the new setup, so it does not live only in our engineers' heads.

CloudHosting keeps migrated systems under monitoring and incident response 24/7 from the moment of the switch, and keeps the old environment ready until you are satisfied. The first days are when odd things appear: a scheduled task nobody listed, a printer still pointing at the old address, a report that runs only at month end. Our engineers fix what comes up, on working days from 9:00 to 17:00 Riga time and at any hour for an outage, and hand over a clear description of the new setup. From then on the platform can stay with us under ongoing administration, or go to your own IT team.