Moving is disruptive by nature. When moving houses, you have to gather your belongings, make the move, and double-check that nothing is left behind.
The same goes for moving your data. While moving data is always disruptive, it doesn’t have to be difficult. And with Movebot, data migrations are fast and easy. As long as you PAC properly, your data transfer will be straightforward, smooth, and easy to manage so that you can start working from your new platform as soon as possible while minimizing the disruptions.
What is PAC?
PAC stands for Plan, Advance, Cutover, the three stages of a Movebot migration. If you PAC correctly, your data won’t have a problem getting into its new home.
Plan — Plan with a scan
The pre-migration scan is a free tool that checks the amount of data you have and looks at your source and destination to make sure there won’t be any issues in the transfer. In some providers for instance, the data estimate includes files that are shared with multiple users and counts it for each user, even though it’s only a single file that will only be moved once. Movebot checks for these situations to determine how much data actually needs to be moved and gives you an estimate.
Doing a scan isn’t a requirement, but we highly recommend it. The scan picks up potential issues and lets you address them if needed so that your data migration will go smoothly. Often, it will simply tell you that your data is good to go, but it’s helpful for peace of mind to see that written out to you.
For any larger scans-anything over 100GB-a scan is even more important. Bigger migrations tend to have more files and more directories, meaning there is more potential for something to come up that the scan can catch. And since it’s free to use, the only downside is that some time will be added to the job-but it often saves more time than it takes in the long run.
What does the scan tell you?
Movebot’s pre-migration scan gives you a lot of important data to review. One of the most important sections to consider is the flagged issues and warnings. There is a separate Flagged Issues (Warnings) tab that breaks down the flagged issues into Unresolvable issues and Warnings. If the scan shows you have flags in any category, you can decide if you need to make changes before starting the migration.
Other information from the pre-migration scan
The scan also provides other helpful information, such as:
- Information about the amount of data.
- When files were last modified and how old they are
- Content breakdown by file type extension
- Top 10 largest files found
- A breakdown of the files like the largest files and deepest folders.
- An opportunity to simulate how your data will look in the new system
- File types and naming incompatibility
- Who owns the data
- How many files are eligible for transfer
Doing a scan is a best practice, especially for large migrations. It could save you a lot of trouble upfront by noticing issues and letting you make the changes the Movebot system recommends. It’s much easier to catch anything early than notice a problem after the migration.
After the scan, the next step is to Advance and transfer the data from one platform to the next.
Advance — Moving the Data
After Planning, the next step of PAC is Advance, and Movebot makes it simple and easy to make your move. With the ability to connect to over 30 different cloud providers (as well as on-prem servers) and move between them, you’ll have no problem advancing your data from one to the next. From almost anywhere you start, there’s a path to get you to your new destination with Movebot.
But connectivity is only part of what makes the journey. The other thing everyone wants is speed. And this is where Movebot really flies.
Unmatched data migration speed
Using Movebot is like taking a private jet compared to a moving truck. Because of its serverless architecture, Movebot has faster data migrations and potential for incredible speeds compared to other data migration tools. This means less time waiting, fewer disruptions in the workplace, and more opportunities to focus on other tasks.
That difference in speed isn’t an exaggeration either. Movebot file transfers can be over 20x faster than some competitors. Movebot can regularly move about 2–5 TB/day. In some cases, it can go significantly faster. For more information about Movebot’s speed, see our article Movebot is fast, but how fast is fast?
Seeing your data migration performance
Once you start the migration, there isn’t anything you have to do because Movebot handles everything for you. However, if you want to review your data migration status including estimated time remaining, you can do that while the transfer is in progress.
The Performance Advisor provides real-time stats and gives you any recommendations if it believes there is something that is reducing your performance. There are also live and historic stats in the Performance Insights section that shows stats on rate limiting, average upload and download time, errors and error rates, vCPU usage for the moveworkers, and data transfer rates.
Cutover — Delta Migrations
Once the data is moved over, the final step of PAC is to do Cutover or delta migrations. Many migrations move the bulk of data while files in the source are still being worked on. Even though Movebot is incredibly fast, for enormous migrations like moving a PB of data, many files will be added to the source while the migration is in process. And after the primary transfer, it’s important to only move the files that were added or updated.
Cutover or Delta Migrations do just that. Once you’ve moved your data you can go back and pick up anything new. And you don’t have to bring the old stuff with you; simply take a load of just the new stuff and move it over.
Customize your migration to suit your needs
With Movebot, you only have to connect your source and destination once, and you can break up the migration into as many jobs as you want. For each of those jobs, you can go back and grab just what’s changed instead of having to migrate from scratch. You don’t have to lose any changes you’ve made.
While these delta migrations won’t update files that were deleted ( Movebot doesn’t delete files because it doesn’t ever access your data), it will find any new additions and let you start a new job to just move those over. This way, you can continue to work through a migration because all of your new files will still arrive at the destination.
A successful PAC
Making your move go smooth requires that you PAC properly. Start with a Plan and see what you have. Then Advance the bulk of it over to your new destination. And if you added some new items during the main move, finish off with a Cutover migration. Plus, if you ever need it, you can get in touch with the support team any time in the process and the professionals can help you PAC.
If you’re planning a data migration, take a look at Movebot. You can register for an account, connect your storage and do a pre-migration scan for free and decide if the platform is right for you. Sign up and give it a try today.
Originally published at https://www.movebot.io.
