IT Data Center & Hybrid Infrastructure Audit Form

1. Organization & Strategic Context

This audit captures baseline information about your organization, drivers for change, and strategic direction to contextualize infrastructure findings.

 

Organization name

Audit owner (full name)

Role/title

Primary business domain

Primary reason(s) for initiating this audit

Which transformational objectives are relevant to your organization? (Select all that apply)

Target date for achieving primary objective

Approximate annual IT infrastructure budget

2. Physical Environment & Facilities

Document the characteristics of each physical data center. Repeat this section per facility if you operate multiple sites.

 

Data center name or identifier

Facility tier classification (Uptime Institute)

White floor area (square meters)

Design power density (kW per rack)

Total IT load capacity (kW)

Average utilization (% of design capacity)

Cooling architecture

Containment (hot/cold aisle) implemented?

Free cooling (economizer) available?

Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) annual average

On-site renewable energy generation (solar/wind)?

 

Percentage of facility energy from renewables

UPS redundancy configuration N+1 or higher?

Fire suppression system

BMS/DCIM monitoring integrated?

Predictive maintenance program active?

3. Server Hardware Inventory

Capture detailed server hardware metrics to identify refresh candidates, supportability, and consolidation potential.

 

Server Hardware Details

Hardware family

Model or SKU

Quantity installed

Installation year

CPU architecture

Cores per socket

RAM (GB)

Support contract active?

End-of-support date

Average CPU % last 90 days

Business criticality (1=low, 5=highest)

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
1
Dell PowerEdge
R740xd
24
1/15/2019
Intel Xeon Silver 4116
12
384
Yes
1/31/2025
45
2
HPE ProLiant
DL360 Gen9
12
6/20/2016
Intel Xeon E5-2680v4
14
256
 
12/31/2022
30
3
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
4
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
5
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
6
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
7
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
8
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
9
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
10
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Dominant form factor

Firmware update policy enforced quarterly?

Describe any proprietary/legacy hardware dependencies

4. Virtualization & Container Platforms

Assess virtual machine density, hypervisor versions, licensing, and readiness for modern containerization.

 

Primary hypervisor

vCenter version/build

 

SCVMM version

Total physical CPU cores in cluster(s)

Total vCPU allocated across all VMs

Average vCPU:pCPU oversubscription ratio

Total RAM (GB) in cluster(s)

RAM allocation ratio (allocated/physical)

vNUMA alignment policy enforced?

Storage thin-provisioning in use?

VM snapshots older than 7 days cleaned automatically?

Container runtime(s) deployed

Kubernetes distribution(s) and version(s)

Service mesh (Istio/Linkerd) in production?

GitOps workflow (ArgoCD/Flux) adopted?

5. Storage Architecture & Performance

Detail storage protocols, media types, capacity forecasting, and data protection strategies.

 

Storage protocols in use

Primary SAN/NAS vendor

Dominant disk media

Raw capacity (TB) across all arrays

Usable capacity (TB) after RAID/provisioning

Annual data growth rate (%)

Deduplication & compression enabled?

Storage tiering (automated) active?

Cloud-gateway tiering to public cloud configured?

Average IOPS per TB during peak hours

Read:Write ratio during business hours

Snapshot-based backup for mission-critical DBs?

Immutable backup copies (WORM) implemented?

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) achieved

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) tested

6. Network & Interconnect

Evaluate topology, bandwidth utilization, and readiness for hybrid-cloud connectivity.

 

Core switching vendor

Core link speed

Layer-3 leaf-spine Clos fabric deployed?

VXLAN/EVPN overlay in production?

IPv6 dual-stack enabled on DC segment?

Average north-south utilization (%)

Average east-west utilization (%)

Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) in use?

Direct connect/MPLS to public cloud provisioned?

Round-trip latency to nearest cloud PoP (ms)

Micro-segmentation (zero-trust) enforced?

Network automation (Ansible/Terraform) adopted?

7. Observability & Management

Assess monitoring coverage, alerting effectiveness, and automation maturity.

 

Monitoring stack components

SLI/SLO defined for critical services?

Synthetic transaction monitoring active?

Distributed tracing (Jaeger/Zipkin) implemented?

Configuration drift detection (Ansible) enabled?

Patch compliance >95% within SLA?

CMDB auto-discovery/integration functional?

AIOps anomaly detection in use?

Describe biggest observability gaps

8. Security & Compliance

Evaluate security posture, compliance scope, and readiness for shared-responsibility models in hybrid cloud.

 

Compliance frameworks in scope

Data classification policy enforced?

Encryption at rest (AES-256) for all tiers?

KMIP-compliant key management in place?

Multifactor authentication (MFA) for all admin consoles?

Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution deployed?

Continuous vulnerability scanning (CV) scheduled?

Segmentation between prod & non-prod enforced?

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tooling active?

Security incident response team (CSIRT) on 24×7?

List any regulatory data-residency requirements

9. Workloads & Applications

Catalog critical workloads to determine cloud suitability, dependencies, and migration complexity.

 

Application Inventory & Cloud Fit

Application name

Version

Tier

Technology stack

Max concurrent users

RPO (minutes)

RTO (minutes)

Licensed for cloud?

Stateless design?

Cloud readiness (1=low, 5=high)

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
1
SAP ERP
EHP8
Tier 0
ABAP/MaxDB
1200
15
30
 
 
2
Customer Portal
v3.2.1
Tier 1
Java/Spring/PostgreSQL
3500
60
120
Yes
Yes
3
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
4
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
5
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
6
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
7
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
8
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
9
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
10
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Microservices architecture adopted for new apps?

CI/CD pipeline (Jenkins/GitLab) in production?

Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) internal offering live?

Describe any mainframe or legacy dependencies

10. Business Impact & Risk Assessment

Rate the potential impact of the following risks on your hybrid-cloud journey

Very Low

Low

Medium

High

Very High

Vendor lock-in with single public cloud

Data egress/transfer cost escalation

Skills gap in cloud-native technologies

Regulatory audit complications

Service availability (SLA) degradation

Increased attack surface

Rate confidence in current capabilities

Very Low

Low

Medium

High

Very High

Capacity forecasting accuracy

Change management process

Incident response capability

Cost allocation/chargeback

Automation maturity

Security governance

Board-level mandate for hybrid-cloud exists?

Outline top three concerns preventing faster adoption

11. Consolidation & Migration Preferences

Indicate preferences for consolidation scenarios and migration approaches to guide roadmap development.

 

Preferred migration strategy

Cloud consumption model

Multi-cloud (avoid lock-in) policy required?

Cloud-bursting (on-prem to cloud) use-case needed?

Edge computing (far-edge) workloads planned?

Earliest feasible migration start date

Desired completion date for primary objective

Expected capital savings target

Any additional constraints or requirements

12. Attachments & Supporting Evidence

Upload diagrams, reports, or other documents that will enrich the audit analysis.

 

Upload network topology diagram

Choose a file or drop it here
 

Upload data center floor plan

Choose a file or drop it here
 

Upload current capacity/performance reports

Choose a file or drop it here
 

Upload compliance attestation/certificates

Choose a file or drop it here
 

Upload executive strategy slide deck

Choose a file or drop it here
 

13. Declaration & Signature

By signing, you confirm that the information provided is accurate to the best of your knowledge and consent to the use of this data for audit and advisory purposes.

 

I consent to the storage and processing of the data submitted

Signature of audit owner

 

Analysis for IT Data Center & Hybrid Infrastructure Audit Form

Important Note: This analysis provides strategic insights to help you get the most from your form's submission data for powerful follow-up actions and better outcomes. Please remove this content before publishing the form to the public.

Overall Form Strengths

This audit form excels in providing a comprehensive, industry-aligned assessment framework for organizations transitioning from on-premise data centers to hybrid-cloud environments. The form systematically captures critical infrastructure dimensions while maintaining clear contextual relevance to strategic business objectives. Its strength lies in balancing technical depth with executive-level strategic alignment, ensuring both IT practitioners and decision-makers can derive actionable insights.

 

The form's architecture demonstrates exceptional maturity through progressive disclosure design patterns, conditional logic flows, and built-in data validation mechanisms. By incorporating global standards like Uptime Institute tier classifications and standardizing on metrics such as PUE, the form ensures consistency across audits while enabling meaningful benchmarking against industry peers. The integration of financial parameters alongside technical metrics provides crucial context for ROI calculations and budget planning.

 

Question: Organization name

Organization name serves as the foundational identifier for audit traceability and multi-client data management. This field establishes the legal entity context essential for compliance reporting, contract management, and maintaining audit trails across potentially complex corporate structures. The implementation as a mandatory single-line text field ensures data consistency while accommodating various organizational naming conventions from multinational corporations to specialized subsidiaries.

 

The field's positioning at the beginning of the audit creates immediate context for all subsequent responses, enabling proper categorization of infrastructure characteristics against industry-specific benchmarks. This design choice facilitates automated scoring algorithms that can adjust recommendations based on organizational profiles, regulatory environments, and sector-specific best practices. The mandatory nature ensures no audit can be submitted without clear organizational attribution, maintaining data integrity for enterprise reporting and benchmarking services.

 

Question: Audit owner (full name)

Audit owner (full name) establishes personal accountability and creates a clear communication channel throughout the audit lifecycle. This field's design recognizes that infrastructure audits require ongoing collaboration between technical teams and executive stakeholders, necessitating a designated point of contact for clarifications, approvals, and implementation planning. The full name requirement eliminates ambiguity that might arise from initials or usernames, ensuring professional correspondence standards.

 

Beyond simple identification, this field enables sophisticated workflow automation where audit progress, approval gates, and remediation tracking can be routed to the appropriate individual. The personal accountability aspect drives higher quality responses, as individuals understand they will be associated with the audit's findings and recommendations. This psychological factor significantly improves data quality compared to anonymous surveys, making the mandatory requirement crucial for audit reliability.

 

Question: Role/title

Role/title provides essential context for interpreting audit responses through the lens of organizational perspective and technical authority. This field enables sophisticated validation algorithms that can flag potentially conflicting responses based on role-based knowledge domains. For instance, a CFO's budget estimates receive different weighting than a Network Engineer's bandwidth projections, allowing the system to apply appropriate confidence intervals to quantitative data.

 

The field's mandatory nature ensures that every audit includes a clear indication of the respondent's decision-making authority, enabling proper escalation paths for high-priority findings. This design supports complex organizational hierarchies where infrastructure decisions may span multiple departments, ensuring that recommendations align with both technical feasibility and business constraints. The title context also enables industry-specific benchmarking, as infrastructure maturity varies significantly between CTOs, IT Directors, and Infrastructure Managers.

 

Question: Data center name or identifier

Data center name or identifier creates the fundamental unit of analysis for infrastructure assessment, enabling organizations with multiple facilities to maintain distinct profiles for each site. This field's design accommodates various naming conventions from enterprise-standardized codes to legacy facility names, ensuring flexibility while maintaining data integrity. The mandatory requirement recognizes that physical infrastructure assessment requires explicit facility identification for proper capacity planning and risk analysis.

 

The field enables sophisticated multi-site analytics where organizations can compare performance metrics across facilities, identify consolidation opportunities, and optimize resource allocation based on regional characteristics. By requiring explicit identification, the form ensures that hybrid-cloud migration strategies can account for facility-specific constraints such as power limitations, cooling architectures, and network connectivity options. This granular approach supports complex migration scenarios where different data centers may follow distinct transition paths based on their unique characteristics.

 

Question: I consent to the storage and processing of the data submitted

I consent to the storage and processing of the data submitted serves as the legal foundation for data processing under global privacy regulations including GDPR, CCPA, and industry-specific compliance frameworks. This mandatory consent field demonstrates proactive compliance design, ensuring that sensitive infrastructure data can be legally processed for audit analysis, benchmarking services, and advisory recommendations. The binary yes/no format provides clear legal documentation while maintaining audit trail integrity.

 

The field's placement at the conclusion of the form ensures that respondents make an informed decision after reviewing the scope of data collected, promoting transparency in data processing activities. This design choice protects both the organization conducting the audit and the entity providing the data, creating a clear legal framework for subsequent activities such as cloud migration planning, vendor selection, and infrastructure optimization recommendations. The mandatory nature prevents accidental submission without proper authorization, reducing legal risk for all parties involved.

 

Mandatory Question Analysis for IT Data Center & Hybrid Infrastructure Audit Form

Important Note: This analysis provides strategic insights to help you get the most from your form's submission data for powerful follow-up actions and better outcomes. Please remove this content before publishing the form to the public.

Mandatory Field Analysis

Organization name
This field must remain mandatory to establish legal entity identification essential for audit compliance, contract management, and maintaining proper audit trails across corporate structures. Without explicit organizational identification, the audit data cannot be properly contextualized against industry benchmarks or regulatory requirements, potentially invalidating subsequent analysis and recommendations.

 

Audit owner (full name)
Mandatory completion ensures accountability throughout the audit lifecycle, creating a clear communication channel for follow-up questions, approval processes, and implementation planning. Personal identification drives higher response quality through accountability mechanisms while enabling sophisticated workflow automation for audit approval gates and remediation tracking.

 

Role/title
The role/title field requires mandatory completion to provide essential context for interpreting responses through organizational authority and technical expertise lenses. This information enables proper validation of quantitative estimates and ensures recommendations align with both technical feasibility and business constraints specific to the respondent's decision-making capacity.

 

Data center name or identifier
Mandatory facility identification ensures that each physical infrastructure assessment maintains clear traceability, enabling multi-site organizations to develop facility-specific migration strategies and consolidation plans. Without explicit data center identification, capacity planning and risk assessment become impossible to correlate with physical constraints and regional characteristics.

 

I consent to the storage and processing of the data submitted
This consent field must remain mandatory to ensure legal compliance with global privacy regulations and industry-specific data processing requirements. The binary consent mechanism provides clear legal documentation for processing sensitive infrastructure data while protecting both parties through explicit authorization for subsequent audit analysis and advisory services.

 

Overall Mandatory Field Strategy Recommendation

The current mandatory field strategy demonstrates exceptional restraint by requiring only essential identification and legal compliance fields, maximizing form completion rates while ensuring data integrity. This approach recognizes that infrastructure audits require significant technical detail that may not be immediately available, allowing respondents to save progress and return with complete information without being blocked by non-critical mandatory fields.

 

Consider implementing conditional mandatory logic where certain fields become required based on previous responses - for example, if "Primary reason for initiating this audit" selects "Regulatory compliance," subsequent compliance framework questions could become mandatory. This dynamic approach would maintain completion rate advantages while ensuring critical regulatory data is captured when relevant. Additionally, consider adding progressive disclosure patterns where complex sections like server inventory can be marked as "complete later" without blocking form submission, enabling more flexible audit workflows for time-constrained organizations.

 

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