Part two of “Notes from the Field” for a home drive to OneDrive for Business migration, looking at network routing, multi-geo considerations and scheduling issues.
BE AWARE OF NETWORK ROUTING
Although the migration tool uses a source UNC path and destination OneDrive URL, files are actually uploaded to Azure blobs before being transferred to OneDrive
e.g. *.blob.core.windows.net
There is a list of required endpoints, and it’s important to determine if the migration traffic will route out through the enterprise proxy servers, or go direct e.g. through an ExpressRoute link. This routing will be specific to your network setup.
Use “Agent Groups” in an enterprise network
Agent Groups are a logical grouping within Migration Manager, allowing each migration to use a specific agent or agent(s)
Carefully consider the network location of each on-prem migration agent, to optimises the traffic flow and minimise bandwidth impact. The two key considerations are:
- proximity to the home drive file server
- proximity to the Azure/Internet egress link.
Assign each agent to an Agent Group based on its location. Use the Agent Group option when scheduling a migration to control which agent is used for a specific migration batch.
SPO Admin Portal > Migration > File Shares > Agents > Select an Agent > Edit > Agent Group
Scanning always uses the Default agent group
Scanning is a pre-migration activity used to identify home drive data issues such as ‘path too long’.
While migration tasks can use agent groups, scanning tasks cannot. Scanning automatically uses the Default Agent group.
If the default group has no agents the scanning task will just wait indefinitely for an agent to be added back to the Default group.
Group migration batches by location
When you use the bulk migration option, the portal imports a CSV file and assigns all entries to the same Migration Agent. If you are carrying out migrations in multiple locations, you need to group them by location and split into separate CSV files to make efficient use of the network..
Run Satelite-geo migrations separately
If you are in a multi-geo tenant, don’t mix geolocations in the same migration batch. Migration to a satellite geo needs a modified process with dedicated or modified agent config.
If you are signed into the SharePoint Online Admin portal “central geo”, switch to the relevant “satellite geo” using the link in the top left. The go to Migrations > File Shares. Initially there will be no agents listed.
Run the agentsetup.exe on the migration server and pause on the first screen of the setup wizard. If the agent is already installed, re-run setup to modify the configuration.
With the setup wizard open, edit the following file:
%temp%\SPMigrationAgentSetup\SPMigrationAgentSetup\Microsoft.SharePoint.Migration.ClientShared.dll.config
Under AppSettings, add the following:
<add key=GeoLocation value="FRA" />
The value must be a valid Azure tenant location code that is already enabled in your tenant.
Save the file and continue the setup wizard. The Migration Manager agent will register in the satellite geo and be visible in the SPO Admin Portal for the relevant Geolocation.
TIMEZONE HEADACHES
Migration tasks can either start immediately or at a specified time. However, the time used in the Migration Manager portal is the time zone tenant home location, not the local time of the administrator accessing the portal.
To schedule a migration outside business hours, the administrator must take account of the local time where the agent is based and convert it to the tenant home time zone.
Scanning tasks don’t have a scheduling option. They just start immediately, although they use a lot less bandwidth.
FALSE POSITIVE SCAN WARNINGS
Temporary MS Office files create false positive warnings in the scanning tab and scan reports. There is no way to ignore the false positives.
The purpose of home drive scanning is to highlight problems such as incompatible file names and long paths. However, it is hard to filter out unimportant issues:
Numerous files beginning with tilde are flagged as warnings in every report - e.g. “~budget 2020.xlsx”. These temporary files created by MS Office are often not cleaned-up when a document is closed, but it is safe to skip them during migration.
If folder redirection to the home drive is enabled, the scan will flag a warning on every instance of desktop.ini. Again these warnings can be safely ignored as the files are recreated by Windows if needed.
This isn’t to say that the pre-migration scan is a waste of time. It does have some benefits:
confirms the Migration Manager service account has access to the home drive
provides statistics such as overall home drive size and number of files
highlights long path issues
COMPLEX MIGRATION SCHEDULING
There is nothing in Migration Manager help with user scheduling. Scheduling is required because there is some user impact:
- User communciation should explain what is changing and link to more information (FAQs, OneDrive training material etc)
- Ideally users log off prior to the data copy to prevent issues with files locked in-use
- Remote users may need to use PLAP VPN to ensure the home drive mapping is removed at next logon
- Post-migration support may be required to help users with the changes (removal of home drive and new data location)
If your IT department does not have any scheduling software, you will most likely end-up using spredasheets.
JUGGLING CSV FILES
An enterprise will need to use the “bulk migration” option in Migration Manager to migrate large numbers of home drives at a time. This option uses a CSV import to specify source UNC paths and target OneDrive URLs. The CSV must be a set format and a template can be downloaded for this purpose.
The pre-migration file share scan step also uses a CSV file, but unfortuately it uses different fields and headers.
The additional migration steps are likely to also be driven from a list such as a CSV file e.g.
- Pre-provisioning OneDrives that don’t already exist
- Removing Active Directory user homeDirectory and homeDrive
- Updating folder redirection policies
- Updating home drive ACLs or file shares to prevent post-migration access
With multiple CSV files in-play and last minute changes to schedules, user scheduling can be complex in its own right.
SUMMARY
Microsoft Migration Manager is a free but basic migration tool. By the time you have discovered its limitations, you may wish you had paid for an ISV product instead.
This article was originally posted on Write-Verbose.com