SharePoint Migration Options in 2016Ben Athawes and Sergey Zelenov

Technology Enablement team 24th November 2016

Migrations can be tricky…

The end is nigh…

Things have changed quite a bit!

cloud-first mobile-first

A modern

SharePoint

intranet

Cloud or on-premises?

Choose your SharePoint

SharePoint

Online

• Microsoft host

and manage it

• Lives in Office

365

SharePoint on-

premises

• 2007, 2010,

2013, 2016 etc.

• You install and

manage it

yourself

• Could be

hosted in IaaS

SharePoint

hybrid

• You have

SharePoint

Online AND

SharePoint

Server

What am I responsible for?

What are our clients choosing?

Desired end state Common scenarios

SharePoint Online

Default option for green field deployments

Publishing intranets and team sites

Office 365 Enterprise licenses purchased

SharePoint Server 2016

Heavy on-premises integration (e.g. data warehouses)

Data residency concerns

Incumbent Systems Integrator

SharePoint hybrid

Long periods of co-existence

Already using SharePoint 2013 or later

Workloads are “cross-premises”

Migration approaches

Source environment assessmentContentDocument Information Architecture (sites, folders, permissions)

Ensure you allocate enough time for large repositories!

Solutions~70% of farms include custom farm solutions (2015)

Modern SharePoint experiences might look *very* different!

Configuration and IntegrationSome configurations may not be supported natively (e.g. non-Active Directory user profile data)

Multiple SharePoint Service Applications may need to be consolidated

Assessment optionsCustom scriptsPowerShell/T-SQL (non-prod copy of data!)

May be the best/only option to assess non-MS systems (e.g. Google Sites)

Maximum flexibility

Specialist migration tools Multiple vendors

Free options available

Microsoft FastTrack Assessment ToolFocus on compatibility

Focus on content

Choose a migration method

Direct Database AttachOnly available on-premises

Supports content and some services

Automatic upgrade to SP2016 “mode”

Third party toolsAllow SharePoint versions to be “leapfrogged”

Support file shares and third party services

MUCH more flexible than DB-attach

Bespoke scriptsCan utilise the new SharePoint Online Migration API

Useful if you know PowerShell

A tool might be more cost effective

SharePoint Online Migration API

Open and flexibleUse either PowerShell, in-house developed or 3rd-party tools

Use for both file shares and on-premises SharePoint sites

Pick your Azure datacentre

FastUses Microsoft Azure for intermediate storage

Minimum CSOM calls = no throttling

Up to 16 jobs running in parallel

Not magicDoes not remove the need for careful assessment and planning

‘Content only’

Requires an Azure Storage account

Microsoft FastTrack CentreFree onboarding support For 150+ Office 365 seats

Microsoft provide remote engineering assistance

Migration Services offeredData migration: SharePoint Online, OneDrive and Exchange

Server-side tools required that use SPOL Migration API

Office 365 Import Service: drive shipping or network upload

ConsiderationsLess control over the migration process

Some gaps today – e.g. delta sync for OneDrive for Business

SharePoint 2013 migration offer ends March 2017

Drive shipping is $2 USD per GB (April 2016)

FastTrack SP2013 Migration Offer

Full Trust

Solutions

Third-party

components

Files in draft

Running

Workflows

FastTrack File Share Assessment ToolCommon findings• Files > 2 GB

• Invalid name (" # % * : < > ? / \ |)

• Invalid extension

• File names > 256 characters

• Invalid folder names (e.g. *_Files)

Other useful info• File count

• Folder count

• Maximum file size

Not IA planning tool!• Summary information only

Assessment tools may not warn you about…

Non-AD

profile data

Feature

deprecation

Licensing

changes

Office 365

“sync gaps”

Throttling in

Office 365UX changes

Case study: SharePoint migrationClient scenario Large engineering company moving from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Online

Assessment approach Third party tool + custom scripts

Migration approach Third-party tool

Challenges

• Per-site collection account maps had to be created

• Sites based on custom templates had to be pre-created before content could be

migrated

• Tool did not support read-only sites

• BCS data required special treatment

Statistics

~170 GB of content, ~165K documents

1 week’s assessment

1 week assigned to test migration – turned into 6 weeks

12 weeks to complete

Recommendations

• Batches do fail – plan for contingency!

• Agree acceptable losses – no assessment method can be detailed enough

• Do not make estimates based on total size only – metadata is a big factor!

• Remember Hofstadter’s Law!

Case study: file share assessment

Client scenario – industry, SPO

What is our assessment approach?

Why did we choose our approach?

What are some of the gotchas?

Statistics – size, number of items, elapsed time

Recommendations – e.g. scale-out with additional nodes

Client scenarioLarge construction company planning to move data from network shares to SharePoint Online

Assessment approach Custom solution – PowerShell scripts + SQL Server database

Challenges

• Symbolic links resulted in the same content being processed multiple times

• Longer paths than supported by .NET

• Required a super-privileged account to minimise access errors

• Relevance of results received from earlier batches diminished as analysis continued

• Server failures forced partial results to be discarded and batches re-run

Statistics>40 million items

10 weeks and counting…

Recommendations• More hardware = faster processing

• Processing everything takes a long time - business-driven focused analysis is much

more efficient

Wrap-up

2007: the end

is nigh

Cloud-first,

Mobile-firstFresh intranet

Perform a gap

analysis

Know your

source

Know your

migration

options

Do not plan

on size alone

SharePoint

Online

Migration API

FastTrack: free

resource

…fancy making your next

upgrade Microsoft’s problem?

Changing the way the world works