Movebot provides a simple, fully hosted and managed data migration tool. Movebot supports migrations of all sizes, sources and destinations and is flexible to assist you whether you're a consumer migrating from Dropbox to Google Drive, or if you're a large enterprise migrating from multiple platforms (including on-premises file systems) to your new cloud platform.
If looking at a complex migration and you do not feel comfortable with your project it is recommended you reach out to either your IT Service Partner or Movebot's Professional Service team to help with your migration project's success.
If looking for Movebot's self-service option, then follow this guide to get started.
Steps:
- Step 1 - Create a Movebot account
- Step 2 - Choose your approach
- Step 3 - Provide project name
- Step 4 & 5 - Configure platforms
- Step 6 - Configure Permissions (Optional)
- Step 7 - Configure Content Options (Optional)
- Step 8 - Configure Options (Optional)
- Step 9 - Add User/Drive Mappings
- Step 10 - Start your migration
Step 1 - Create a Movebot account
Movebot is simple and quick to get started, you just need to create an account at admin.movebot.io
Step 2 - Choose your approach
Movebot offers two migration wizards, a simple migration wizard and an organization/project migration wizard. Select your chosen wizard to proceed with the migration configuration, for this guide we will pursue an Organization/Project migration.
| Simple Migration Wizard | This should be considered when migrating either as a consumer or individual from Dropbox to Google Drive for example, or if you're looking to migrate block storage from a single bucket to another platform. |
| Organization/Project Wizard | An organization should consider this option if migrating multiple users, shared/team drives or sites and you need additional functionality such as permissions, versions and granular content control. |
Step 3 - Provide project name
This is to identify the migration within Movebot, this can be anything you would like, it's best to keep it something you can identify this project by. Some customers break up their migration depending on its size and may name it 'Organization Migration users A - J' or some may call it 'Box to Egnyte migration', it's up to you. Once named, click Save and Configure Source.
Note: You can come back at anytime and change the name or any setting within this project, even while the migration is running.
Step 4 & 5 - Configure platforms
For both steps 4 and 5 you will need to configure your source and destination platforms. To learn how to do this, see our cloud connector/platform documentation or our on-premises file system documentation. After you configure your source and destination carry on to the next step with Save and Configure.
Note: If migrating a business with shared and team drives you will need to use Google Workspace or Dropbox Business connectors to see both the shared and team drives as well as the entire organization's users.
#Tip: If you are not interested in migrating permissions or altering any additional configuration options, then click on the [6 Options] tab and scroll to the bottom and Save and Exit, then jump to Step 9 within this guide.
Step 6 - Configure Permissions (Optional)
With Movebot you can migrate permissions from one platform to another, while Movebot does not recommend this as each platform can be significantly different in how it handles permissions and thus could cause privacy and security issues if not configured appropriately, it is possible. To configure a basic permission migration see Movebot's documentation on this, for anything more complex and you are not comfortable with the outcome it is recommended you work closely with Movebot's Professional Service team.
If you do not wish to migrate permissions, leave the box unchecked and Save and Configure Content Options.
Step 7 - Configure Content Options (Optional)
Movebot will automatically sanitize incompatible file characters, names and handle duplicate files for you, however there are some customizable options that enable you to only migrate files that have not been modified for a period of time, exclude file types or files over a certain size as well transform file names in flight. Much like permissions this can lead to undesired outcomes of data loss or duplicates if not configured appropriately, if you are not comfortable seek assistance from Movebot's Professional Services team, otherwise it is recommended to leave the default options selected.
Save and Configure settings when you're ready to proceed.
Step 8 - Configure Options (Optional)
Under this tab you can configure where your migration runs from (data sovereignty and performance improvements for on-premises migrations), if region of migration does not matter, then it is best to leave as the default San Francisco. Aside from this, you can also enable/disable notifications on migration success/failure and also force the migration to always run as a delta. For your first migration pass it is strongly recommended to leave Always Use Delta turned off.
In reality you can bypass these settings and jump straight to Save and Exit
#Tip: At this point Movebot suggests that you run a scan across your organization so that you can truly understand your data structure, data amount, users and the overall distribution which will help you plan and understand the cost of your migration. More importantly it will also highlight any issues that may be encountered due to platform limits (an example is over 400,000 files in a folder going into a Google Shared Drive). To run a scan our guide on running a pre-migration assessment scan.
Step 9 - Add User/Drive Mappings
You should now configure your migration mappings (transfers), you can come back and add more as you require. Often customers will configure a small sample, test and adjust then add the remainder. You can add as many mappings you would you like or as discussed earlier, break them down over multiple projects (such as users may be migrated under a different project to team drives). Once at the dashboard select Add User/Drive
You can now manually select users, drives, sites and folders or upload a CSV file with your mappings. If using the manual picker, you can traverse the folder structure and delve into folders by selecting the hyperlinked name of the item and to return you select the back arrow beside 'Viewing:'.
To map users you simply select one or many source items and select the destination item you would like to migrate them into, then select Add Item Mapping (repeat for as many mappings as you require). Once you've created your mappings, navigate Back to Transfers.
Note: Checking "Don't preserve source root folder" will result in the content from the source going directly into the folder selected on the destination
Step 10 - Start your migration
Now you have configured your underlying project settings and added your project mappings (or some of). You can now kick off your migration, you can select the checkbox beside each migration you wish to interact with and select an option from the dropdown.
| Action | Description |
| Resume Job/Rerun Failures | Once your migration has completed and should there be any failed items you can easily rerun only these items using this action. Also used to resume a migration that has been cancelled/paused from where it was. |
| Start Scan/Simulation | Run a discovery scan only on this source dataset. |
| Start Full Migration | Will migrate all data, versions and permissions if enabled, will not check for modified files and will overwrite anything on the destination if existing. |
| Start Delta Migration | This will force the tool to check the source and destination modtimes and only modified any files that have a newer modtime on the source. |
| Start Data Only Migration | This will exclude permissions if enabled and only migrate the data component. |
| Start Delta and Permissions Migration | This can be used when migrating permissions to transfer permissions across as a final sweep rather than migrating permissions initially. This will also run a data delta migration. |
| Cancel Migration | Cancel or pause the migration for it to be resumed later. |
| Delete Migration | Delete the mapping from view, can still be seen under the filter "Deleted" |
For more helpful guides on the Movebot platform see Movebot's tips and tricks section which covers parts mentioned in this guide in more detail, otherwise if you are looking for support please contact support@movebot.io and for billing or sales queries contact sales@movebot.io