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Microsoft’s new Migration API, and what it means for SharePoint Online Migrations

Tamir Orbach, Director of Product Management - Metalogix

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Agenda

• Preparing for SPO Migrations (regardless of speed)• What’s the New Application Programming Interface (API) About?

• Migration over Internet/WAN• Office 365 Protection Mechanisms• Migration Tools using Old API• Migration Tools using New API

• Migration Speeds with old API• Migration Speeds with new API• Migration Vendors using the new API• Vendor Neutral Demonstration• Unknowns and Cautions• Q&A

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Preparing for Migrations (regardless of speed)

• Evaluate your company strategy and understand whether you need to make changes to your SharePoint farm as you migrate.

• Understand your Content – do you have stale content that no one is using any more? Why migrate that to SPO? Do you have content that is not supported in SPO?

• Understand your SharePoint Inventory – do you have site templates, list templates, custom web parts, full trust code solutions, sub site numbers, list view thresholds, or other settings that are not supported in SPO? Those will not migrate, and you’ll have to remediate.

• Determine if you’d like to leverage new and exciting functionality in SPO such as Community Sites, Video, etc.

• Ensure your resulting search results are better than they were before – improve your Information Architecture

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Migrating over Internet/WAN

SharePoint Online/OneDrive For Business (OD4B) Final Destination

File Share,SharePoint On-Prem,Potentially any other Data Source.

On-Premises SharePoint

Long distance between on-premises and Office 365

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Office 365 Protection Mechanisms

SharePoint Online/OD4B Final Destination

File Share,SharePoint On-Prem,Potentially any other Data Source.

On-Premises SharePoint

•User and Farm based Throttling•Virus Scanning•Load Balancing of Web Server Connections•Distributed Denial of Service Monitoring

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Migration Tools using Old API

File Share,SharePoint On-Prem,Potentially any other Data Source.

Copy Site Collection/Site/List

1. Read List details from source

2. Write List to target

Copy/Paste Item

1. Copy Item2. Paste Item3. Copy Item Permissions4. Paste Item Permissions5. Copy Item Metadata6. Paste Item Metadata7. Etc,.

On-Premises SharePoint SharePoint Online/OD4B Final Destination

Every single item is separately pushed to SPO

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Migration Tools using New API

Copy Site Collection /Site/List

File Share,SharePoint On-Prem,Potentially any other Data Source.

1. Read List details from source

2. Write List to target

On-Premises SharePoint

Package

1. Create Package of 100+ items

2. Create XML file containing items, permissions and metadata

3. Upload to Azure Temporary Storage

4. Tell SPO to pull package from Azure

Timer Job Based imports content in a scalable way that will not hurt the service using back end resources.

SharePoint/ODBFinal Destination

Pull from Azure

Azure Blob Storage

Items packaged, pushed->

in batches

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Content Matrix migrations using new API

File Share,SharePoint On-Prem,Potentially any other Data Source.

On-Premises SharePoint

Azure Temporary Storage

Timer Job Based import in a scalable way that will not hurt the service using back end resources.

Migrate from SQL Server in Azure VMs– Migrates 99% of content from Content DBs located in Azure Virtual Machines– Azure Virtual Machines are physically next door neighbors to SharePoint Online– Geographical distance is no longer an issue!

The Power of Automation– PowerShell allows consulting companies to automate the

migration of thousands of Site Collections, Sites, Lists instead of migrating 1 at a time

– Combining PowerShell with massive multi-threading creates a multiplier effect

SQL Server Backup/Restore

1. Backup Content DBs on-premises

2. Copy Content DBs to Azure VM

3. Restore Content DBs to SQL Server in Azure VM

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Migration Speeds with old API

Site Collections Sites Doc Libs Lists0

0.20.40.60.8

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GB/ hour into SharePoint Online

• Speeds do not factor in multiple VMs in parallel

• Speeds do NOT include remediation

• Significant variations can occur depending on time of day, how busy SPO is, etc.

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Migration Speeds with new API

• Speeds DO factor in multiple VMs in parallel

• Speeds do NOT include remediation

• Significant variations can occur depending on time of day, how busy SPO is, etc.

• These speeds will not be achieved 24 hours a day

• Numerous exceptions to this including Managed Metadata & infopath forms

Site Collections Sites Doc Libs Lists05

1015202530354045

GB/ hour into SharePoint Online

Up to 30X

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Migration Vendors using the new API

• Metalogix

• MetaVis

• ShareGate

• AvePoint

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Vendor Neutral Demonstration

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Unknowns and Cautions

• One service pulling content from an SPO tenant – how does impact performance?

• What happens if 10 other tenants are migrating at the same time?

• What about remediation?

• How many Azure Blob Storage Accounts should I use?

• What will not migrate using the new API?

• What’s the optimal batch size?

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Q&A