Iron Mountain secure data center decommissioning

Asset Lifecycle Management

Data centre decommissioning

Maximising data centre value recovery while ensuring compliance and sustainability

Safe, secure, and sustainable data centre decommissioning

When the time comes to move or retire data-bearing IT assets from your data centres, it’s absolutely critical to securely and efficiently decommission those assets.

Hardware decommissioning can put a signiﬁcant burden on your data centre. From the operational strain to the complex process, and the lack of streamlined execution to the risk of a data breach, you need an expert partner to handle it all.

Here’s how Iron Mountain can help you decommission assets correctly:

When you work with Iron Mountain, you can rest assured that the valuable data hardware that you need to be disposed of securely will be decommissioned reliably.

How are we different?

Our team delivers reliable and secure expert end-to-end services, including consolidation and decommissioning data centre services. Whether you need to store your information with Iron Mountain or break down and responsibly dispose of all data centre assets, our team is here to provide these services. Increase your operational efficiency, work towards maximum ROI and ensure comprehensive data security. We offer:

Total data destruction

● No data is recoverable from the drives we sanitise—ever
● 10M+ drives sanitised
● 100% sector-verified erasure guaranteed

Efficient, certified decommissioning process

● Data sanitisation completes in 1-2 days
● Data centre decommissioning is complete in weeks, not months
● 1M+ servers and 3M+ drives processed annually

Unmatched value recovery

● The world’s number-one IT asset remarketing program
● We make the market to maximise client-recovered value
● Clients report higher returns vs. alternatives

Customer success story: hyperscale services provider

Challenge

Arrival of new servers and storage, which were rapidly losing value while waiting for installation, placed a premium on accelerating decommissioning for this hyperscale services provider. While the nature of the business mandated maximum data security, the provider needed return on investment from asset remarketing to help fund increased tech refreshes.

Solution

Iron Mountain’s custom data centre decommissioning services safely, securely, and efficiently executed comprehensive data erasure, uninstallation, removal, and secure shipment of equipment to state-of-the-art processing facilities for remarketing.

Results

All racks were data-free and ready to be wheeled out four days after the project started. All assets were removed from the client site within 14 days. Remarketing the retired assets netted the client several million dollars, helping to close budget gaps.

Reach out to our team today to get started!

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Data centre decommissioning project data points:

297 racks
121,893 drives (HDD, SSD, flash cards)
100% of drives erased or securely destroyed, with certification
Data elimination complete in 4 days
All racks removed in 2 weeks
Client proceeds: $4.4M

Take a closer look at the process for yourself:

Iron Mountain takes pride in our wide range of safe and secure decommissioning services. Some of the assets that we process include:

Processes servers | Storage systems and devices | Networking gear | Computer tapes | Racking

Our asset disposition services we understand that organisations place a high value on their operational efficiency, secure data centre decommission and financial performance. Our comprehensive data destruction services and our reliable state-of-the-art maximum security set us apart.

A deeper dive into Iron Mountain’s data center decommissioning process.

Benefits of professional data centre decommissioning services

Our professional data centre decommissioning services help you securely retire IT infrastructure while minimising risk and maximising business value. This includes:

Improve data security: Protect sensitive information with secure data sanitisation, chain of custody and certified destruction processes.
Support regulatory compliance: Meet industry and data privacy requirements with comprehensive reporting and audit-ready documentation.
Reduce operational risk: Minimise disruption through expert project planning, equipment removal and logistics management.
Advance sustainability goals: Extend asset lifecycles through reuse and responsible recycling to reduce e-waste.
Maximise asset value recovery: Recover value from eligible IT equipment through refurbishment and remarketing.
Simplify project management: Work with a single provider to manage every stage of the decommissioning process.
Scale globally: Deliver consistent ITAD services for data centres across multiple facilities and geographic locations.