Microsoft OneDrive + Quest On Demand Migration
Because Microsoft OneDrive for Business is as critical as email for most organizations, having a OneDrive migration tool is essential. Just like mail users, OneDrive users do not want to lose the structures of their files and folders during migrations.
Quest On Demand Migration (ODM) is a OneDrive migration tool that makes it easier to migrate OneDrive sites to new tenants, allowing end users to preserve valuable data, including user and sharing permissions, ensuring continued access post migration. In addition, ODM allows you to filter OneDrive storage files based on folder, type, date or size to accelerate migration, as well as schedule migration tasks at times that are convenient for you and your organization.
Migrate OneDrive sites to new tenants while preserving valuable data
Discover OneDrive sites to plan your migration
A tenant-to-tenant migration cannot start without first knowing what is on the source tenant. For OneDrive migrations, that begins with a list of the user accounts that use OneDrive on the source. ODM is a OneDrive migration tool that collects statistics (count and size of files) for source OneDrive sites to help with migration planning.
OneDrive sites can also be provisioned in advance on the target tenant using PowerShell. Pre-provisioning OneDrive for hundreds to thousands of users may take up to 24 hours for the OneDrive locations to be created. Alternatively, OneDrive sites can be provisioned as part of the migration task.
Migrate file versions for each document migrated
Many migration solutions only migrate the last version of a file, leaving an end user unable to review previous versions of files or change histories. This lack of version migration can become a significant problem for organizations that are required to maintain versions saved in file storage structures for business or compliance reasons.
The ODM OneDrive migration tool can support migrating only the last versions of OneDrive documents when the business requirement is to migrate as fast as possible and only the last version is needed. However, ODM also supports migrating versions, whether it be a subset of versions, or all versions. While these migrations will take longer to run because of the increase in content, they will also meet stringent business and/or regulatory requirements many organizations require.
Preserve user and sharing permissions to allow continued access
User mapping allows for the permissions on the target tenant to be mapped to what they were on the source tenant. This applies to the internal users, internal groups, and guest (external) users. This OneDrive migration tool allows shared permissions to be set to direct file permissions to avoid sending multiple share request messages to all users. Maintaining continuity of security and access to migrated files is a critical business data requirement.
Preserve metadata
OneDrive users want to see the important metadata copied to the new tenant. ODM supports the copying of the following metadata within OneDrive: Created Date, Created by, Last Modified Date, Last Modified By and document properties, ensuring the ability for end users to easily sort their documents
Filter data based on folder, type, date or size to accelerate migration
Some organizations may only need to migrate a subset of files to a new tenant. Perhaps they want to filter to only include the last 12 months of files. Or they want to exclude specific folders from the migration. ODM provides these capabilities to customize your OneDrive migration.
Reduce system bandwidth slowdowns with auto-scaling
The ODM OneDrive migration tool allows you to automate migrations so they scale up during non-business hours and weekends when throttling rules are typically more relaxed. Conversely, you can scale the migration back down during business hours to reduce the load on the target tenant.
Add OneDrive accounts on the workstation once migration completes
Use the Desktop Update Agent to add OneDrive accounts to your workstations
after the OneDrive migration completes.
FAQ
Yes. But even with a solid OneDrive migration tool, there has to be enough available space on the target OneDrive. Initially, OneDrive for Business users have 1TB of storage. OneDrive administrators can increase this to 5TB of storage per user. You can contact Microsoft to provision OneDrive storage up to 25TB. Beyond 25 TB, storage is provisioned as 25 TB SharePoint team sites to individual users. That is a lot of storage space and should allow a user to transfer all OneDrive to another drive.
You can store up to 30 million files in a SharePoint library; but Microsoft recommends syncing no more than 300,000 files across all document libraries.
Although, you can move a large number of files over time, Microsoft recommends uploading batches of no more than 100 items at a time. You could be manually migrating files for a long, long time.
Thus, you should consider the performance impact on moving all your OneDrive files even though you may have space to do so.
The difference between copying and moving is that copying a file makes a duplicate of the file or directory in another location without affecting the original content. Moving a file transfers the original file or directory to another location and leaves nothing behind.
You can connect to more than one OneDrive on your computer: OneDrive for Business and OneDrive Personal. In File Explorer, you can move files between the folders in these OneDrive sites by selecting the files, drag and drop them in the new location.
The files you move from OneDrive Personal to OneDrive for Business are essentially recognized as new files. Thus, these files don’t retain metadata details such as Modified and Modified By.
Note: If you are moving files within the same disk drive, it will be faster than copying. This is because only the file path is modified for a moved file, the actual data stays in place on the disk. That is why a file move appears to run faster than a file copy.
Yes, OneDrive can store files locally. You will see the files in File Explorer. However, you can also save space by making files available online only. The files appear in File Explorer; but a cloud icon is displayed with each file. The files will not download locally until you open it.
Alternatively, you set files to Always keep on this device. These files appear with a green circle with a white check mark. These files are always available on your device – even when you are offline. But they are also available in OneDrive Online.
All OneDrive files are stored in the Microsoft cloud. OneDrive for Business is based on SharePoint. Each OneDrive for Business site is like a document library in a SharePoint site. Thus, your OneDrive files are stored in a document library; but the user interface represents a file explorer experience. OneDrive files can also be stored locally on your device on a disk drive.