Choosing the Right Data Migration Partner for Your Business

Migrating business data from on-premise to the cloud is a challenge for any business leader. Scotty Calkins, senior systems engineer at Datadobi, talks about the factors you should consider when choosing the right data migration partner for your business, how to ensure data integrity, and securing mission-critical data during the transition. 

Moving homes can be quite the stressful endeavor, especially when you choose a moving company that isn’t qualified to handle your belongings. The movers may be new on the job, careless, or simply not have the expertise necessary. You should look for movers that understand where you are now, where you want to go, and the best way to get there whether that be out to a farm in Kansas or a penthouse suite in New York. 

For those planning a data move, picking the right partner is equally critical. Moving furniture and moving data do share some similarities in what you should look for when choosing a partner to help you to do so. Either way, you are trusting someone to safely and accurately pick-up and move that which is most important to you. And for virtually every business, government, and nonprofit organization, data certainly ranks at the top of that list.

For any data migration, you want a partner that understands where you are now, where you want to go, and definitely how to get you there. The most prominent data in any organization is unstructured data, and your chosen partner should be able to handle the migration of data between any vendor’s NAS offerings, between any NAS and cloud-based file services, and even between any platform offering S3 compatible storage. Moving data within your datacenter or between your datacenter and cloud storage offerings has never been easier.

There are a lot of anxieties around changing the location of your data. How will you get there? What will life look like when you get to the cloud? Add in compliance regulations for data integrity, the act of guaranteeing data is migrated correctly, and fears over data being corrupted by a cyberattack or other interruption in the cloud, and it’s no surprise that some enterprises have yet to make the jump. 

However, part of the challenge for organizations is knowing which tool to trust when migrating and/or protecting their data in public cloud storage. Many are afraid to make the transition because of the unfamiliarity and uncertainty as to how to get their data from their object or on-premises file system to the cloud. But knowing how to select the right partner for your move can make all the difference. 

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Flexibility

You want to choose a partner that will provide your business with the best of both worlds by allowing organizations the flexibility to keep their NAS file data either in a data center, in public cloud, or both. Especially in the newly remaining era of remote working. Companies considering a migration –either to adapt as a result of the pandemic or as a strategic, long-term business decision–should seek a partner that can make a migration uncomplicated and swift. Importantly, the right partner will offer flexibility for future needs.  At any point in the future they should be able to easily reverse the migration,  allowing the customer to repatriate their data back to the on-premises system. 

Data Integrity

Maintaining data integrity–and being able to prove it–is often portrayed as a complicated, time-consuming, and nearly impossible task. But that doesn’t need to be the case. The right partner will be able to document the “chain of custody” for files moving between two disparate systems. The chain of custody should be easily available for reporting at the end of a migration, allowing enterprises to prove the integrity of their data was fully preserved during the move from the original source system. 

IT professionals, legal teams, and compliance officers–as well as C-suite executives– should have continuous access to a report that details the integrity of their file data to guarantee it is complying with any regulatory requirements. 

Additionally, look for a partner that always executes a verification process against every single file system object copied to Azure. By verifying the individual copy operations you’ll easily detect any corruption prior to logging a successful copy. Any failures due to verification are automatically re-copied. Choose a partner that is not only comfortable and skilled at this process, but understands its critical importance to your business.

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Enhanced Protection

Today, data protection is crucial to the success of your business. Look for a migration partner that understands this need and is willing to look beyond a migration and incorporate protection into the whole process. A seasoned partner will understand the importance of creating a “golden copy” of your mission-critical data in order to complement an existing business continuity plan. The golden copy can be kept in a bunker site where it will be isolated from other recovery systems and safe in the event of a disruption such as a cyberattack or storage-platform related bug. This gives organizations the ability and flexibility to get back up and running as fast as possible. 

Choosing a data migration partner can feel a lot like choosing the right movers: you want to ensure they will treat you and your belongings (data) like the business-critical data that it is. By focusing on choosing a partner that prioritizes flexibility, data integrity, and enhanced data protection will go a long way to pave a clear path to a smooth, painless, and protected data migration.  

Do you think finding the right partner is essential for moving data from on-premise systems to the cloud? Let us know your thoughts on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!