The Present [and Future] Landscape of Data Migrations

17th of August, 2018 / / 1 Comment

A rite of passage for the majority of us in the tech consultancy world is being a part of a medium to large scale data migration at some stage in our careers. No, I don’t mean dragging files from a PC to a USB drive, though this may have very well factored into the equation for some us. What I’m referencing is a planned piece of work where the objective is to move an entire data set from a legacy storage system to a target storage.… [Keep reading] “The Present [and Future] Landscape of Data Migrations”

Automate network share migrations to Sharepoint Online using ShareGate PowerShell

7th of June, 2018 / / 2 Comments

Sharegate supports PowerShell scripting which can be used to automate and schedule migrations. In this post, I am going to demonstrate an example of end to end automation to migrate network Shares to SharePoint Online. The process effectively reduces the task of executing migrations to “just flicking a switch”.

Pre-Migration

The following pre-migration activities were conducted before the actual migration:

  1. Analysis of Network Shares
  2. Discussions with stakeholders from different business units to identify content needs
  3. Pilot migrations to identify average throughput capability of migration environment
  4. Identification of acceptable data filtration criteria, and prepare Sharegate migration template files based on business requirements
  5. Derive a migration plan from above steps

Migration Automation flow

The diagram represents a high-level flow of the process:
 

The migration automation was implemented to execute the following steps:

  1. Migration team indicates that migration(s) are ready to be initiated by updating the list item(s) in the SharePoint list
  2. Updated item(s) are detected by a PowerShell script polling the SharePoint list
  3. The list item data is downloaded as a CSV file.
… [Keep reading] “Automate network share migrations to Sharepoint Online using ShareGate PowerShell”

Migrating Sharepoint 2013 on prem to Office365 using Sharegate

14th of November, 2017 / / No Comments

Recently I completed a migration project which brought a number of sub-sites within Sharepoint 2013 on-premise to the cloud (Sharepoint Online). We decided to use Sharegate as the primary tool due to the simplistic of it.
Although it might sound as a straightforward process, there are a few things worth to be checked pre and post migration and I have summarized them here. I found it easier to have these information recorded in a spreadsheet with different tabs:
Pre-migration check:

  1. First thing, Get Site Admin access!
… [Keep reading] “Migrating Sharepoint 2013 on prem to Office365 using Sharegate”

A tool to find mailbox permission dependencies

5th of November, 2017 / / 30 Comments

First published at https://nivleshc.wordpress.com
When planning to migrate mailboxes to Office 365, a lot of care must be taken around which mailboxes are moved together. The rule of the thumb is “those that work together, move together”. The reason for taking this approach is due to the fact that there are some permissions that do not work cross-premises and can cause issues. For instance, if a mailbox has delegate permissions to another mailbox (these are permissions that have been assigned using Outlook email client) and if one is migrated to Office 365 while the other remains on-premises, the delegate permissions capability is broken as it does not work cross-premises.… [Keep reading] “A tool to find mailbox permission dependencies”

Exchange 2010 Hybrid Auto Mapping Shared Mailboxes

30th of May, 2017 / / 2 Comments

Migrating shared mailboxes to Office 365 is one of those things that is starting to become easier over time, especially with full access permissions now working cross premises.
One little discovery that I thought I would share is that if you have an Exchange 2010 hybrid configuration, the auto mapping feature will not work cross premises. (Exchange 2013 and above, you are ok and have nothing to worry about).
This means if an on-premises user has access to a shared mailbox that you migrate to Office 365, it will disappear from their Outlook even though they still have full access.… [Keep reading] “Exchange 2010 Hybrid Auto Mapping Shared Mailboxes”

Complex Mail Routing in Exchange Online Staged Migration Scenario

15th of October, 2016 / / No Comments

Notes From the Field:

I was recently asked to assist an ongoing project with understanding some complex mail routing and identity scenario’s which had been identified during planning for an upcoming mail migration from an external system into Exchange Online.
New User accounts were created in Active Directory for the external staff who are about to be migrated. If we were to assign the target state, production email attributes now, and create the exchange online mailboxes, we would have a problem nearing migration.… [Keep reading] “Complex Mail Routing in Exchange Online Staged Migration Scenario”

SharePoint content migration using Sharegate and Powershell

4th of October, 2016 / / 3 Comments

Content Migration

When it comes to content migration we have the option to write code (script) or use a migration toolset or a combination of both, thus it is important to identify the appropriate toolset based on “ease of use” and what we need to achieve.
I have evaluated several migration toolsets however, in this blog I am going with Sharegate as I have extensively used this product recently.

Sharegate is a toolset used to  “Manage, Migrate and Secure SharePoint & Office 365”. 

… [Keep reading] “SharePoint content migration using Sharegate and Powershell”

Migrating resources from AWS to Microsoft Azure

22nd of August, 2016 / / 1 Comment

Kloud receives a lot of communications in relation to the work we do and the content we publish on our blog. My colleague Hugh Badini recently published a blog about Azure deployment models from which we received the following legitimate follow up question…

So, Murali, thanks for letting us know you’d like to know more about this… consider this blog a starting point :).… [Keep reading] “Migrating resources from AWS to Microsoft Azure”

Azure Deployment Models And How To Migrate From ASM to ARM

4th of August, 2016 / / 9 Comments

This is a post about the two deployment models currently available in Azure, Service Management (ASM) and Resource Manager (ARM). And how to migrate from one to the other if necessary.

About the Azure Service Management deployment model

The ASM model, also known as version 1 and Classic mode, started out as a web interface and a backend API for the PaaS services Azure opened with at launch.

Features

  1. ASM deployments are based on an XML schema.
… [Keep reading] “Azure Deployment Models And How To Migrate From ASM to ARM”

Migrating Sitecore 7.0 to Azure IaaS Virtual Machines – Part 1

26th of March, 2015 / / 1 Comment

INTRODUCTION

Recently, I had the opportunity of working on a Sitecore migration project. I was tasked with moving a third-party hosted Sitecore 7.0 instance to Azure IaaS. The task sounds simple enough but if only life was that simple. A new requirement was to improve upon the existing infrastructure by making the new Sitecore environment highly available and the fun begins right there.

To give some context, the CURRENT Sitecore environment is not highly available and has the following server topology:

  • Single Sitecore Content Delivery (CD) Instance
  • Single Sitecore Content Management (CM) Instance
  • Single SQL Server 2008 Instance for Sitecore Content and Configurations
  • Single SQL Server 2008 Instance for Sitecore Analytics

The NEW Sitecore Azure environment is highly available and has the following server topology:

  • Load-balanced Sitecore CD Instances (2 servers)
  • Single Sitecore CM Instance (single server)
  • SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Group (AAG) for Sitecore Content (2 servers)
  • SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Group (AAG) for Sitecore Analytics (2 servers)

In this tutorial I will walk you through the processes required to provision a brand new Azure environment and migrate Sitecore.… [Keep reading] “Migrating Sitecore 7.0 to Azure IaaS Virtual Machines – Part 1”