Datacenter Migration Services in Switzerland

Datacenter migration refers to the coordinated physical relocation of an entire colocation environment (racks, cages, suites, or buildings) from a source facility to a destination facility. This is not cloud migration, not software workload transfer, and not virtual machine portability. It is the physical movement of hardware: servers, storage arrays, networking equipment, patch panels, cable runs, and power infrastructure. Reboot Monkey specialises in this physical layer. Our scope covers full cage migrations, suite-level relocations, and building-level facility moves within the Swiss market and between Swiss and EU facilities. Every engagement begins with an on-site survey at the source facility to produce an accurate asset inventory, rack diagram, cross-connect map, and cabling documentation before any equipment is moved. The distinction matters because facility operators and cloud service providers in Switzerland address different problems. Equinix, Digital Realty, Green.ch, and Safe Host lease colocation space and provide power, cooling, and physical security. They do not coordinate the physical move of your hardware from one facility to another, particularly if source and destination are different operators. Hyperscaler platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) address virtual workload portability, not the physical equipment that runs your infrastructure. Reboot Monkey fills the gap between these categories. We are a third-party physical services provider operating inside other companies' datacenters. We hold per-facility access credentials at both source and destination facilities, coordinate logistics between campuses, and deliver the migration documentation required by Swiss regulatory frameworks including the new Federal Act on Data Protection (nFADP, effective September 2023) and FINMA Circular 2018/3 on IT outsourcing. Engagements are sized by scope: single-rack server migrations, full cage relocations, suite-level moves, or building-level facility consolidations. Each scope tier uses a proportionate team, wave plan, and documentation package. Small migrations (one to four racks) can be executed within a single maintenance window. Full cage or suite migrations are planned across multiple waves with a dedicated project lead managing execution from planning through final handover. Contact our team at <a href="/en/contact/">/en/contact/</a> to scope your migration.

Switzerland's three primary datacenter hubs are Zurich, Geneva, and Basel, and Reboot Monkey covers all three under a single service agreement. <strong>Zurich</strong> is Switzerland's largest datacenter market and the primary source and destination for cross-operator facility migrations. Major facilities covered include Equinix ZH2, ZH4, and ZH5 on the Zurich IBX campus; Digital Realty (formerly Interxion) ZUR1 and ZUR2 on the Glattbrugg campus approximately 12km northeast of Zurich city centre; Green.ch Zurich across its Metro Campus locations; NTT Global Data Centers ZRH1 in Rümlang; and Vantage Data Centers ZRH1 in Winterthur, approximately 20km northeast of the Glattbrugg campus. Equinix ZH2 serves as the primary Swiss-IX (Swiss Internet Exchange) interconnection point. Migrations involving Swiss-IX connected infrastructure require pre-migration cross-connect mapping and BGP peering session inventory, which Reboot Monkey includes as a defined migration phase. <strong>Geneva</strong> is Switzerland's second hub, approximately 280km from Zurich via the A1 motorway. The Zurich-to-Geneva corridor is the most common inter-city migration route in Switzerland, typically used for primary-site-to-disaster-recovery facility builds. Major Geneva facilities covered include Safe Host GVA1 and GVA2 (the dominant carrier-neutral operator in Geneva) and Green.ch Geneva. The 280km transit requires a GPS-tracked specialist IT courier vehicle, advance loading dock reservations at both the Zurich source and Geneva destination, and a two-person minimum team for rack-level moves. Round-trip same-day is feasible for small migrations. Full cage or suite migrations typically use an overnight logistics window with NOC monitoring throughout transit. <strong>Basel</strong> is approximately 85km from Zurich via the A2 or A3 motorway, making same-day round-trip feasible for most Basel engagements. The Basel market is concentrated in the pharmaceutical sector. Novartis, Roche, and related pharmaceutical infrastructure in the Basel region require chain-of-custody documentation aligned with GxP-adjacent practices, including full asset serialisation and photographic evidence at every custody transfer point. Green.ch Basel is the primary facility destination for Basel-region migrations. Cross-city migrations between any combination of Zurich, Geneva, and Basel facilities are handled under a single contract with a single chain-of-custody document covering both the source-leg decommission and the destination-leg installation. No split-responsibility between vendors. No separate chain-of-custody documents for each city. One project lead holds accountability for the full engagement across all sites. For cross-border migrations between Switzerland and EU countries (Zurich to Frankfurt, Geneva to Paris), Reboot Monkey's EU entity simplifies procurement. Switzerland holds an EU adequacy decision. Intra-CH and CH-to-EU migrations operate under standard processor agreements with no additional data adequacy mechanisms required.

Datacenter migrations are executed in defined waves rather than a single cutover. Each wave has a fixed scope (which racks, which assets, which cross-connects), agreed go/no-go criteria, and an estimated maintenance window. Wave planning reduces service disruption by migrating non-critical infrastructure first, allowing the client to validate destination connectivity and power before migrating production workloads. Every Reboot Monkey datacenter migration engagement in Switzerland follows this delivery structure: <strong>Phase 1: Site Survey and Runbook Preparation.</strong> The project lead conducts an on-site survey at the source facility. Output: full asset inventory, rack diagrams, cross-connect inventory (including Swiss-IX port assignments for ZH2/ZH4/ZH5 facilities), BGP peering session list where applicable, cabling documentation, and power draw per rack. The draft migration runbook is delivered within three business days of site survey completion. The final runbook is agreed at least five business days before the first migration wave. <strong>Phase 2: Wave Execution.</strong> Each wave is executed within the agreed maintenance window, typically four to twelve hours depending on rack count and cabling complexity. The migration team at the source facility handles decommission: label application, cable removal, rack disassembly, palletising or crating for transport. Specialist IT courier transport (GPS-tracked) is coordinated with advance loading dock reservations at both ends. The team at the destination facility handles staged installation: physical racking, cable runs, cross-connect establishment, power-on, and initial connectivity verification. Minimum photographic documentation per wave is ten photographs: pre-migration rack state, decommission in progress, palletised or crated, loaded for transport, transport in transit, received at destination, staged at destination, installed, cabled, and powered on. These photographs form part of the per-wave chain-of-custody package. Signed handover per wave is delivered within four hours of wave completion. <strong>Phase 3: Post-Migration Validation and Reporting.</strong> Swiss-IX cross-connect verification confirms BGP sessions are restored and connectivity is established at the destination. The full migration summary report, covering chain-of-custody for all waves, is delivered within two business days of the final wave completion. The report is formatted for direct filing in FINMA IT outsourcing registers or for inclusion in nFADP processor agreement documentation without additional client workload. This structure is consistent across all engagement sizes. A four-rack migration uses a simplified version of the same framework. A full cage migration across Equinix ZH2 to Digital Realty ZUR1 uses the full multi-wave structure with a larger team and a longer runbook. The framework does not change. The scope and team size scale. Contact Reboot Monkey for a quote tailored to your facility list and wave requirements at <a href="/en/contact/">/en/contact/</a>.

Business continuity is the primary risk concern in any full datacenter migration. Equipment in transit cannot serve production traffic. Cross-connects decommissioned at the source must be re-established and verified at the destination before the migrated infrastructure returns to service. BGP sessions must be re-established. Power-on validation must confirm that all hardware has survived transport without damage. Reboot Monkey addresses these risks through three mechanisms: wave sequencing, a separate rollback plan, and real-time NOC monitoring during execution. <strong>Wave sequencing</strong> means non-production infrastructure is migrated first. Development environments, backup infrastructure, and non-critical systems move in Wave 1, allowing the client to validate destination connectivity, power stability, and cooling before production workloads migrate in later waves. This is standard practice. What varies between providers is whether wave sequencing is documented in a formal runbook with explicit go/no-go criteria, or managed informally without documented criteria. Reboot Monkey uses the formal approach: every wave has a written go/no-go checklist signed by the client and project lead before wave execution begins. <strong>Rollback planning</strong> is separate from the migration runbook. The rollback plan defines the trigger criteria that would cause a wave to be reversed, the responsible party who calls the rollback, and the step-by-step reversal procedures for each wave. The rollback plan is delivered alongside the final migration runbook, at least five business days before the first wave. Swiss financial institutions operating under FINMA Circular 2018/3 specifically require documented rollback procedures for large-scale infrastructure changes. Reboot Monkey's standard rollback plan satisfies this requirement. <strong>NOC monitoring</strong> covers both source and destination facility access throughout each migration wave. Incidents during migration, classified as P1 (hardware failure, access denied, transport incident, or connectivity failure at destination) receive a 15-minute NOC response and a four-hour on-site resolution target. NOC monitoring follows a UTC 06:00-18:00 EU follow-the-sun window for primary coverage, with pre-approved on-call escalation for migrations outside business hours. For migrations involving Swiss-IX connected infrastructure at Equinix ZH2, ZH4, or ZH5, the rollback plan includes a defined phase for BGP session rollback at the source facility. If connectivity verification at the destination fails, BGP sessions can be reinstated at the source within the maintenance window. This is a specific operational consideration for Swiss-IX connected infrastructure that local IT firms without SwissIX operational experience may not plan for explicitly. <a href="/en/smart-hands/switzerland/">Smart hands services</a> are available as a standalone support layer during the post-migration stabilisation period, for tasks requiring deeper technical judgment such as network configuration adjustments or OS-level diagnostics after equipment installation at the destination.

Vendor neutrality is the core operational differentiator for datacenter migrations that cross operator boundaries. Facility SmartHands programs are bounded by a single operator's campuses. Equinix SmartHands can dispatch technicians within Equinix ZH2, ZH4, and ZH5. It cannot send a team to Digital Realty ZUR1 to coordinate the destination leg of a cross-operator cage migration. Digital Realty in-house support operates within the ZUR1-ZUR4 Glattbrugg campus. It cannot coordinate the source-leg decommission at Equinix ZH or Green.ch Zurich if the destination is a Digital Realty building. When a client uses a facility SmartHands program for a cross-operator migration, the result is two separate vendors with separate chain-of-custody documents, separate SLAs, separate handover reports, and no single point of accountability for the full engagement. If a problem arises during transit, neither vendor owns the gap between source decommission and destination installation. Reboot Monkey operates across all major Swiss colocation operators under a single contract. Source and destination can be different operators. The project lead coordinates facility access credentials at both ends, manages both the source decommission team and the destination installation team, and delivers a single chain-of-custody document covering the full migration from source facility departure to destination facility handover. This applies to any combination of Swiss facilities: Equinix ZH2/ZH4/ZH5, Digital Realty ZUR1-ZUR2, Green.ch Zurich/Geneva/Basel, Safe Host GVA1-GVA2, Vantage ZRH1 in Winterthur, NTT ZRH1 in Rümlang. Intra-operator migrations (Green.ch Zurich to Green.ch Geneva, for example) are also handled as single engagements without requiring the client to coordinate separately with the operator at the destination city. For cross-border migrations between Switzerland and EU facilities (Zurich to Frankfurt, Geneva to Paris, Zurich to Amsterdam), the same single-contract model applies. Reboot Monkey operates in 250+ cities across 190 countries. Cross-border migrations do not require a handoff to a different regional provider. <a href="/en/rack-and-stack/switzerland/">Rack-and-stack services</a> can be added to any migration engagement for the destination installation phase, particularly for environments where equipment arrives from multiple sources and requires full physical commissioning before going live. The Swiss market includes active demand for cross-operator migrations in several high-value segments. The 2023 UBS acquisition of Credit Suisse triggered infrastructure consolidation across Zurich colocation facilities, with legacy Credit Suisse environments being rationalised into consolidated UBS infrastructure across Equinix ZH and Digital Realty ZUR campuses. Enterprises migrating GPU and HPC clusters to Vantage ZRH1 in Winterthur for AI-optimised power density require cross-operator cage migrations from Equinix or Digital Realty. Swiss enterprises repatriating workloads from hyperscalers to owned colocation hardware face a physical migration requirement for the destination installation. Each of these scenarios requires a vendor-neutral provider with credentials at both source and destination. <table> <thead> <tr> <th>Provider Type</th> <th>Coverage</th> <th>Cross-Operator Migration</th> <th>Single Chain-of-Custody</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>Facility SmartHands (Equinix)</td> <td>Equinix ZH2/ZH4/ZH5 only</td> <td>No</td> <td>No (source or destination only)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Facility in-house (Digital Realty)</td> <td>ZUR1-ZUR4 Glattbrugg only</td> <td>No</td> <td>No (source or destination only)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Local Swiss IT firm</td> <td>Variable, typically one city</td> <td>Limited</td> <td>Typically no</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Reboot Monkey</td> <td>All major Swiss facilities, Zurich / Geneva / Basel</td> <td>Yes</td> <td>Yes, full migration from source to destination</td> </tr> </tbody> </table>

Datacenter migration in Switzerland is not a single buyer profile. The service is used across several distinct segments, each with different drivers, timelines, and documentation requirements. <strong>Swiss financial institutions (banks, insurance, asset management)</strong> represent the highest-value migration segment. FINMA Circular 2018/3 on IT outsourcing requires banks, insurance companies, and financial intermediaries supervised by FINMA to document third-party physical IT migration providers in their IT outsourcing register. This means the migration runbook, per-wave chain-of-custody, rollback plan, and signed handover documentation must be formatted for filing with the compliance team. Reboot Monkey delivers the full FINMA documentation package as a standard deliverable, not an add-on. The UBS-Credit Suisse consolidation following the 2023 acquisition has created sustained demand for full cage and suite migrations across Zurich colocation facilities, often with short timelines and FINMA documentation requirements. <strong>Swiss enterprises in regulated industries (pharma, life sciences, healthcare)</strong> make up the Basel-region migration market. The Basel pharmaceutical cluster (Novartis, Roche, and related sector infrastructure) requires chain-of-custody documentation aligned with GxP-adjacent practices. Full asset serialisation, photographic evidence at every custody transfer point, and signed handover with client acceptance per wave are standard requirements. Reboot Monkey's base documentation package meets these requirements without custom workflow modifications. <strong>International enterprises using Switzerland for data sovereignty</strong> are a growing segment. Switzerland is not an EU member state but holds an EU adequacy decision under the General Data Protection Regulation and is aligned with EU standards through its own data protection framework. The nFADP (Federal Act on Data Protection), which entered into force on September 1, 2023, governs the processing and physical handling of personal data on Swiss territory. International enterprises using Swiss colocation for GDPR-adjacent data sovereignty benefit from Swiss facilities' high-trust jurisdiction while remaining outside EU regulatory complexity. Physical migrations of these environments require nFADP chain-of-custody documentation. Reboot Monkey's chain-of-custody package satisfies nFADP Article 8 accountability obligations for third-party physical hardware handlers. <strong>Mid-market enterprises consolidating or relocating Swiss DC footprints</strong> are the volume migration segment. Lease expiry at the source facility is the most common trigger. A mid-market enterprise colocating two to six racks at an Equinix or Digital Realty campus approaching lease end needs a physical migration to a new facility, often a different operator, within a defined window. This segment does not always have FINMA or nFADP obligations driving documentation requirements, but benefits from Reboot Monkey's cross-operator credentials and single-contract model to avoid coordinating two separate vendors for source decommission and destination installation. <strong>AI and GPU infrastructure operators</strong> are an emerging segment. Enterprises migrating GPU and HPC clusters from standard Equinix or Digital Realty Zurich campuses to Vantage ZRH1 in Winterthur (an AI-first facility with higher power density and liquid cooling capability) require cross-operator full cage migration support with specialised handling for dense GPU hardware. <a href="/en/server-migration/switzerland/">Server migration</a> (individual server-level relocations rather than full cage or suite moves) and <a href="/en/data-center-decommissioning/switzerland/">datacenter decommissioning</a> (end-of-life decommission with ITAD) are available as standalone services or combined with a full migration engagement where the source facility is being permanently vacated.