File Server / File Share to SharePoint Online migrations

Couchdrop
Couchdrop
Published in
3 min readDec 22, 2020

Microsoft SharePoint Online is widely used across enterprises globally, it’s often added into other Microsoft packages which in its own way offers a free tool for content management and collaboration — especially in this new way of remote working. However, migrating your data and content into SharePoint from your traditional on-premise File Server or File Share can prove difficult, cumbersome and just overall complex.

sharepoint online migrations

When migrating from on-premise traditional file servers Movebot provides an executable agent that doesn’t need to be installed and connects to Movebot without the need to worry about firewalls or complex configurations. Once connected, it is as if you are using another cloud endpoint, it behaves the same way and encrypts your data in transfer using HTTPS, as well offers checksum technology to prevent data loss.

Connecting to SharePoint is the easy part, it’s the on-premise part that is often the challenge. With Movebot you simply log in through OAuth (your administrators credentials). With other providers, you often have to install heavy software, open firewalls and beg your security team to be able to run the software. With Movebot, it’s as simple as running and executable and deleting it from your downloads folder once you are done.

Configuring the Windows file server agent

When you are setting up your migration, whether is a project or a simple migration, you will need to download the executable file and copy the token key. Once downloaded, run the agent and follow the instructions.

migrate file server to sharepoint
Connecting file server to Movebot
sharepoint online migration
Connecting to Movebot
migrate to sharepoint from file server
Connected to Movebot for SharePoint migration
mapping user drives to sharepoint
Mapping users/folders within Movebot
migrating file share / server to sharepoint
An example of mapping a user

An important note, when migrating from a local file server, be sure to select a Movebot region under advanced settings to migrate from that is closest to you, this is to improve performance and also maintain data sovereignty. If you don’t see a region you require, then please reach out to the team and see if we can establish an ad-hoc region for you.

Another option that you have is the ability to run a discovery scan across your file server which simulates a migration and will show you any errors that may be encountered, a breakdown of the data and analytics of the content.

file server migrations sharepoint
Movebot preflight discovery scan

Movebot keeps migrations simple, whether it is on-premise to the cloud, or cloud to cloud. It’s always simple, fast and cost-effective.

Head to movebot.io and begin your migration today. For a detailed guide on migrating from a File Server to a cloud platform head to our knowledge base.

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Originally published at https://www.movebot.io.

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