Data Center Decommissioning in San Francisco

SFMIX is an IRS 501(c)(12) cooperative internet exchange in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it connects its sites around the Bay Area with an all-dark-fiber backbone. Digital Realty SFO (200 Paul) stands on Paul Ave in San Francisco. For a CTO or IT director retiring equipment in this market, decommissioning is the final stage of a hardware lifecycle: the racks are emptied, the hardware is accounted for, and the space is handed back to the facility operator in the condition the operator expects.

The facility operator owns and runs the building, including its power, cooling and access policy, and Reboot Monkey engineers work under the operator's site rules. That governs how a removal is planned. Reboot Monkey is a third-party datacenter services operator, not a hosting company and not a datacenter owner, so the work is carried out inside data centres that other companies own and run.

As of 2026, Reboot Monkey's field engineers work in 190 countries and more than 400 locations, which means a San Francisco project can sit inside a wider programme without a separate arrangement for each site.

Data centres in San Francisco, ordered by the number of networks present:

Data center decommissioning is the removal and disposal of retired hardware. In practice, a San Francisco job covers servers, switches, storage arrays, and their cabling and rail kits. The scope is agreed with the customer before anyone enters the facility, so the asset list you hold and the work that is carried out match.

The handling of a job follows a fixed sequence:

Reboot Monkey engineers work in the customer's facility, under the site rules the operator sets, and the same service covers the full range of physical work around a decommissioning. When retired equipment also needs data wiping, on-site shredding or degaussing, collection and transport, or resale or buyback quoted case by case, IT asset disposition (ITAD) is processed by Reboot Monkey staff in a partner's processing facility or on the customer's site. Resale and buyback are quoted case by case.

A second, briefed Reboot Monkey engineer is named as backup for every customer site, so a decommissioning window is not tied to one person's availability. Prices are quoted on request and depend on the customer and the size of the job, which keeps the quote tied to the actual asset list and not to a standard package.

A decommissioning often sits alongside other work: hardware that is leaving one rack may be moving to another, or a hall may be emptied in stages while neighbouring equipment stays live. Reboot Monkey handles each of these as separate, scheduled work against the same asset records.

These terms apply in every facility in San Francisco where Reboot Monkey engineers work.

The data centres we work in hold their own certifications, such as ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO 9001. Ask us for the certificate of your site.

The same decommissioning process applies across the United States: asset recording against the customer's list, advance scheduling with the facility, and item-by-item logging. If your estate spans several metros, the same approach can be applied in each of these cities:

Decommissioning is usually one step in a larger change. If equipment is being relocated, plan the move with [Data Center Migration in San Francisco](/en/data-center-migration/united-states/san-francisco/) or move individual systems with [Server Migration in San Francisco](/en/server-migration/united-states/san-francisco/). Where the retired hardware is being replaced, [Colocation in San Francisco](/en/colocation/united-states/san-francisco/) provides the rack space for the new equipment. For physical tasks on live equipment that stays in place during the work, [Remote Hands in San Francisco](/en/remote-hands/united-states/san-francisco/) covers reboots, cable checks, component swaps and visual checks on your instruction.