Six phases, six deliverables
Every phase of an archive project ends with a document or a working system, not a status update.
Assess, Design, Source, Integrate, Migrate, Support. Each phase has one named output you can inspect, and each one asks something specific of your team in return.
Phase deliverables are defined at the start of an engagement, so a project can be paused or handed over at any boundary without losing work.
An archive project fails in predictable ways. Capacity gets bought before anyone has agreed what is being retained. Hardware arrives before the network and rack conditions were checked. A migration starts without a reconciliation method, so nobody can prove afterwards that every object arrived. The structure below exists to make each of those failures impossible to reach silently. It is one delivery narrative that replaced eleven separate service descriptions, because in practice a customer buys a project, not a menu of activities.
Support is ongoing, not a terminating phase.
Six phases and their deliverables
| Phase | What happens | Deliverable you receive |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Assess | Data classification, growth measurement, review of existing storage, retention obligations and read patterns | Current-state and gap report |
| 2. Design | Tier selection, capacity modelling, interface and namespace design, retention and immutability rules, resilience choices | Architecture and capacity plan |
| 3. Source | Component selection against the design, configuration validation with manufacturers, import and lead-time planning | Validated bill of materials |
| 4. Integrate | Racking, network and host configuration, software installation, policy configuration, acceptance testing | Installed and commissioned system |
| 5. Migrate | Staged movement of existing archive data, checksum verification, metadata mapping, cutover | Verified data movement with reconciliation |
| 6. Support | Media and hardware health monitoring, policy changes, capacity tracking, refresh and readability planning | Maintenance and lifecycle review |
Phases can be bought individually. An assessment that concludes your current platform is adequate is a valid result and we will write it that way.
Where the phases interlock
Design cannot start until Assess has produced a classification, because tiering decisions depend on it. Source cannot produce a defensible bill of materials without a finished design, or the quantities are guesses. Migrate should not begin until Integrate has a signed acceptance test, because you need a proven destination before you move anything into it. The archive migration and modernisation page covers phase five in depth, including how reconciliation evidence is produced.
What we need from you at each phase
This is the half of the project plan that suppliers usually leave out. A delivery slips far more often because access was not arranged than because equipment was late.
- Assess. Read access to the systems being reviewed, plus time with the people who own the data. A records or compliance contact who can state the retention obligations, rather than an assumption about them. Periods and their interpretation remain with your own legal advisers.
- Design. Named decision-makers for the trade-offs we cannot make for you: recovery expectations, acceptable retrieval latency for cold data, and whether a cloud tier is permitted under your data-residency policy.
- Source. Procurement rules, delivery address and site constraints, plus confirmation of anything that must be routed through a specific channel or framework agreement.
- Integrate. Rack space, power, cooling and network ports confirmed as available on a date. Change-window approval. A host or application owner available during commissioning.
- Migrate. Agreed test windows, a frozen source during cutover phases, and an application owner able to validate that retrieved objects are readable in the application, not just present on disk.
- Support. A single named contact with sign-off authority, and notification when your retention policy or ingest volume changes materially.
Where an item on that list cannot be provided, say so early. Almost all of them have a workaround if it is planned for, and almost none of them do if it is discovered mid-phase.
Documentation and handover
Each phase output is written to be readable by someone who was not in the room. Architecture plans state the assumptions they depend on, so that when ingest doubles, you can see which part of the model breaks first.
Handover includes the configured policy set, the archive software's own catalogue and reporting behaviour, and the operational runbook for retrieval and media handling. What the software layer contributes to that is described under archive management software.
Timescales and honesty about them
We do not publish standard project durations. The two variables that dominate are how quickly source data can be classified and how long imported hardware takes to clear customs and reach the site, and both are specific to your organisation and country. Import realities across the region are discussed on GCC coverage.
A schedule is produced during Design, once the bill of materials is close enough that lead times can be requested rather than estimated. For background on who is delivering this, see about Aban Smart. To start at phase one, request an assessment.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. If you have an architecture from another party we can begin at Source or Integrate, subject to a short review of the design. That review is not an attempt to resell the work. It exists because we take responsibility for commissioning the result, and we need to know which assumptions we are inheriting.
Related pages
Turn your requirement into a defensible architecture
Share the workload, capacity, retention, access, and resilience requirements. Aban Smart will identify the next discovery inputs and the appropriate engagement path.