International Journal of Science, Engineering and TechnologyAuthors: Sumaiya Tanjim, Ahsan Habib, Mahjabin, Rezaul Karim
Abstract: As federally funded research institutions like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) transition toward hybrid and cloud-native infrastructures, the systematic decommissioning of legacy data centers has become an operational imperative. This review article explores a comprehensive framework for decommissioning within NIH IT environments, addressing the technical, regulatory, and governance dimensions of sunsetting aging infrastructure. Beginning with an overview of key drivers such as energy inefficiency, outdated hardware, and federal optimization mandates the review maps out each phase of the decommissioning lifecycle, including infrastructure discovery, workload migration, data sanitization, compliance verification, and asset disposition. The article emphasizes compliance with standards like FISMA, HIPAA, and NIST SP 800-88, and presents risk mitigation strategies for challenges such as legacy application lock-in, user resistance, and residual data exposure. Emerging trends such as AI-driven resource scheduling, zero trust architectures, and container-native HPC frameworks are also discussed as future enablers of infrastructure modernization. Real-world NIH-aligned case studies illustrate practical approaches to decommissioning at scale, offering lessons on automation, stakeholder communication, and post-project auditing. This review serves as a strategic and operational guide for IT architects, administrators, and compliance officers working to retire legacy infrastructure securely, efficiently, and in alignment with national biomedical research priorities.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15847388
