Here is one of those tasks that just about every organisation who is running under Microsoft products and adopting or migrating to cloud will have on their “to-do” list. It is also the task that the business will not have got around to starting because of every other item stacked on top of it on that list. That task is to migrate all user home drives in the organisation to cloud storage, which in the Microsoft version means transferring everything to their OneDrive for Business service.
The reason this is on everyone’s task list is because it is yet another Microsoft cloud service where they are making the offer far too sensible not to consider. In most cases, migrating your user home drives to OneDrive would fall under the “no-brainer” category when making executive decisions as anyone with an Office 365 license is already paying for the storage and service.
The following table explains the storage allocation your licensed Office 365 users are already eligible for:
These figures make for a fairly easy sell to any company who want to save some storage, service and management dollars. After all, that is the ‘migrate to cloud’ sell that we have all been supposed to take onboard from the beginning yet it has had us scratching our heads as to whether there is enough business value in it. In the case of a home drive move to OneDrive, the writing on the wall is a little clearer than migrating most other services to cloud. Migrate existing user home drive data to:
In most cases, the outcome of the migration will be that simple.
The part of this migration task where it gets a little more complex is the “how do we get there” and “what do we do with that data once it gets there”. That is, what tools and processes can be used for a seamless migration and then, how do we secure and backup the user data once it has been moved.
You are going to need to put a plan in place that is tailored to the needs of your organisation which will vary vastly depending on the business size and complexity. You are also going to need to make sure that the end state will meet your organisation’s requirements. Consider these areas that are at the forefront of your migration for potential headaches:
Tools
What tools are available to the organisation and do they provide user self-service migrate capability?
Governance
How will sharing be controlled internally and externally? How will users be trained to manage home drive data governance?
Backup and Recovery
How will OneDrive meet your retention policies? How are file restores handled?
Policies
Are the existing on-premises type policies able to be applied to cloud? Which policies are going to be affected by the migration?
These are just some of the basics in evaluating your move, which can cause some serious disruptions or breaches if not planned out correctly.
Planning this kind of migration is by far the most difficult component of the move. In order to reduce as much stress as possible on your organisation and achieve as seamless as possible a migration you will need help in gathering relevant organisational information, determining project timelines, and mitigating any surprises that may appear. If this project is on your “to-do” list and is getting buried further down in the pile, invite Diaxion in for a chat and we will gladly begin helping to plan out the OneDrive migration process with you.
