Data centre decommissioning with Circular IT group covers a single server room or a whole data centre, one site or many.
One team plans the project, powers down and de-racks the equipment, removes the data and moves the hardware. What still has value is resold, the rest is recycled, and you receive one report covering every asset.
From East Kilbride, south of Glasgow, we run projects at sites across the UK.
Data centre decommissioning is the planned retirement of the IT in a data centre or server room. It includes the work around the hardware: the asset register, data sanitisation, transport, resale, recycling and the paperwork that shows where each asset went. The equipment usually includes:
Most projects start with a move to cloud or colocation, a consolidation or relocation, a hardware refresh, a site closure or the end of a lease. Partial decommissioning is common during phased migrations.
What started as a request for two telecom sites grew into one of our largest decommissioning programmes. It now covers more than 150 sites across Europe, from remote fibre locations to large data centres.
Sites listed as holding one to five racks turned out to hold as many as 40, and many systems were still live and fully cabled. Our engineers powered the equipment down, removed the cabling, dismantled the racks, and organised commercially committed hardware. Planning, transport and warehouse capacity were reviewed in cycles as the real volumes came in, so the schedule held.
“We weren’t just collecting equipment; we were carefully removing old telecom equipment while new infrastructure was being installed, sometimes on the very same racks.”
Ghena Saafan, Logistics Planner, Operations, ITAD
Survey and plan
We assess the site first: what is there, how to reach it, how sensitive the data is and when the space must be clear. You receive the project schedule before any work starts.
Asset register
Each item is recorded by make, model and serial number before it is moved. This register becomes the backbone of the final report.
Data sanitisation
Drives are erased with Blancco, with a certificate for each device, or shredded. Both can be done on site, before any equipment leaves the building.
Power-down and removal
Our engineers take the equipment out of service, de-cable it and strip out the racks, working around any systems that stay live.
Secure transport
Equipment is packed and moved in GPS-tracked vehicles with tamper-evident sealing, which keeps the chain of custody on record all the way to our facility.
Resale, donation and recycling
Hardware with a second life is resold through our server buy-back, or donated to a charity you choose. We also organised any already commercially committed hardware. The rest goes to IT recycling, with nothing sent to landfill.
Report and handover
You receive the asset register with the outcome for each item, plus the erasure and destruction certificates. The recycling documentation and a sustainability impact summary for your ESG and CSRD reporting come with it.
Drives and other data carriers can be dealt with on site. Working drives are erased with Blancco software to the NIST 800-88 standard. Drives that cannot be erased, or that your policy says must be destroyed, go into our mobile shredder, and your team can watch the drives being shredded.
Hard drives are shredded to 6 mm or smaller (DIN 66399 H5) and SSDs to under 10 mm² (E5), as set out on our hard drive destruction page. This suits organisations whose policy does not allow equipment to leave the premises before the data is gone.
The certificates and the asset register are your evidence under UK GDPR, and the recycling of what is left follows the WEEE regulations.
UK projects are handled at our East Kilbride facility, in operation since 1996, which takes care of collection, data erasure and destruction, recycling and buy-back.
For estates in more than one country, our facilities in the Netherlands and Belgium do the same work locally. The project still runs as one programme, with one point of contact and one report. Beyond Europe, we deliver IT asset disposition (ITAD) in more than 90 countries.
The UK operation is certified to ADISA ITAD Essentials Gold, ISO 27001, ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and Cyber Essentials. Separately, SEPA licenses it as a waste carrier and has approved it as an Approved Authorised Treatment Facility (AATF), which covers the recycling side.
The same team that clears your old estate can supply what replaces it, from new and refurbished infrastructure to short or long-term rental, so the full cycle runs through one partner.
New and refurbished servers, storage and network equipment for the infrastructure that replaces your old estate.
Third-party maintenance for the servers, storage and network equipment we supply.
Rent servers and infrastructure for a migration, a project or as a longer-term alternative to buying.
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Large-scale European data centre decommissioning
What began as a request to decommission equipment at two telecommunications sites quickly evolved into one of Circular IT group's largest multi-site data centre decommissioning projects to date., spanning more than 150 telecommunications sites across Europe.
Circular IT group becomes Belgium’s most certified IT Asset Disposition provider
Circular IT group is now Belgium's most certified ITAD provider, strengthening secure and sustainable IT lifecycle services with ISO, WEEELABEX and B Corp certifications.
It depends on the number of sites and assets and on the services you need. A single server room can be done within a few days. Multi-site programmes take several weeks, and the largest run for months. You receive the schedule before work begins.
Cost comes down to the number of racks and sites, whether infrastructure is still live, if equipment is cabled, the access conditions and whether data is destroyed on site. Where servers and network equipment have resale value, it is set against the cost of the work. The valuation is free and without obligation.
We buy servers and switches, routers and storage up to six years old from Arista, Cisco, Dell, Fortinet, HPE, IBM, Juniper, Lenovo, and NVIDIA where they have resale value. You receive a buy-back proposal within a few business days, and the value is paid to you or set against the cost of the work.
Decommissioning is the whole programme: planning, the asset register, data sanitisation, removal, reporting, and potentially resale. Disposal is one part of it, the recycling or final processing of hardware that cannot be reused.
Yes. Sites in the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium are handled by our own facilities. Beyond Europe we work in more than 90 countries, and the whole estate is managed as one project.
Yes. Racks, cabling and UPS units come out with the servers, storage and network equipment, so you do not need a second contractor for the strip-out.
Paul McHugh
Send us the site, the rough number of racks and your deadline, and Paul McHugh, Managing Director (UK), will reply with a plan and a quote. Our UK team is also on +44 845 206 8100.
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