Data Migration to Cloud Strategy for Enterprises and SMBs
Enterprises and SMBs planning to move away from their current local storage system and embrace the cloud must have a proper migration strategy.
It is only through a proper action plan that businesses can effortlessly navigate through the complexities of data migration, including:
- Segregating user accounts and data to migrate
- Mapping user data to the right accounts in the destination environment
- Keeping metadata and permissions intact during migration
- Migrating incremental changes after the one-time migration
- Decommissioning the local storage system
This post explores the intricacies of a structured strategy for data migration to the cloud.
1. Pre-migration Assessment Is Key To Planning the Entire Migration
Unlike cloud-to-cloud migration, the source and target environment have many differences in local storage to cloud migration.
The vast differences make it a must for businesses to perform a thorough pre-migration assessment to segregate the user accounts and the data to migrate to the cloud.
Pre-migration assessment also helps enterprises and SMBs identify unforeseen challenges, which, in turn, helps lower the risk of migration roadblocks.
2. Skipping Data Linked to On-prem Applications
A critical aspect of local storage data migration to cloud strategy is having the insights to knowing what not to migrate.
It is common for businesses to migrate their entire userbase and data from the source to the destination in cloud-to-cloud migration (e.g., Google Drive to OneDrive migration). However, businesses need to avoid certain local storage datasets during local storage to cloud migration.
On-prem application-linked dataset’s local residency is particularly important for unaffected throughput. As such, businesses need to avoid local storage data linked to on-prem systems (if the plan is to maintain certain on-prem applications).
3. Choosing and Finalizing the Features To Migrate
Data migration to the cloud does not necessarily have to be as simple as a data dump. Businesses can tap into the opportunity to retain the collaboration structure of the local storage in the cloud (destination).
Replicating the collaboration structure of the source translates to retaining metadata and sharing permissions of the data migrated to the destination cloud.
Businesses can also choose to transfer file versions, embedded links, external shares, shared links, and in-line comments during on-prem to cloud migration from migration service providers such as CloudFuze.
4. Monitoring the Migration Progress Carefully
There is no guarantee that the migration will progress as planned. This is why businesses must regularly monitor the migration progress through data migration reports.
Enterprises and SMBs must prioritize checking vital details in the migration reports, such as the total number of users and data size migrated in a day or week, file or folder conflict warning status, etc.
5. Validating One-time Migration
After the one-time data migration to the cloud is completed, it is crucial to validate the migration by checking the migration reports and the overall one-time migration summary report.
Post-migration validation helps businesses identify loopholes (if there are any) such as file or folder conflicts or missed data and resolve them.
CloudFuze offers comparison delta that compares source and destination data, identifies missed data and user accounts, and re-migrates them to the destination.
Explore more post-migration tasks businesses need to prioritize to ensure complete migration success.
6. Initiating Delta Migration to Transfer Incremental Changes
The last most crucial aspect of data migration to cloud strategy is to transfer all the incremental changes (made during one-time migration) to the destination via delta migration.
In most cases, delta migration is not as time taking as one-time migration. Validating the delta migration upon completion is equally important.
