4 issues in large-scale unstructured data migrations and how Komprise in Azure Marketplace can help

Brass Contributor

Apr 02, 2025

In this guest blog post, Darren Cunningham, vice president of marketing at Komprise, discusses large-scale unstructured data migrations, common issues with using free tools to achieve them, how an analytics-first approach can help, and the benefits of Komprise in Azure Marketplace.

When you’re talking about petabytes of unstructured data, which can be billions of files of varying sizes and types, migrating to the cloud can be a chore with unintended problems. It is not uncommon to experience unexpected delays, data loss, bottlenecks, and other failures that arise from not only the size of the data but also from networking, security, and other configurations that get in the way.

Furthermore, with so many storage tiers in the cloud and the enterprise reality of unstructured data strewn across many different systems on premises, it’s hard to know which data to move, where, and when. You don’t want to make mistakes such as placing frequently accessed data in high-latency storage, disrupting user productivity. Conversely, if you place inactive, cold data on a high-performing cloud file storage tier, you will spend more than is needed for the data’s requirements. It has never been more important to right-place growing volumes of file and object data and optimize cloud investments so you can achieve your intended return on investment (ROI) and keep end users happy.

It is no wonder IT teams often dread large data migrations, fearing data loss, extended delays, compliance issues, and higher-than-expected spending. Yet we also know hybrid cloud infrastructures are often considered an enterprise best-in-class strategy to balance the needs of different workloads and meet the overarching goals for innovation, productivity, security, and cost avoidance/savings.

4 issues with using free tools for large-scale unstructured data migrations

So, how do you migrate unstructured data to the cloud without taking on undue risk? It is tempting to leverage free migration tools to get the job done. Yet, free tools quickly hit their limits. Some of the common problems include:

Performance bottlenecks: Free tools tend to break down at around 500TB or even sooner with small files.
Massive file system scans, metadata management, and indexing: Free tools struggle to efficiently handle billions of files, creating slowdowns and breakage.
Resiliency and retries: Any network blip or file lock can cause free tools to fail, requiring manual intervention.
Preserving file permissions, metadata, and timestamps: Free tools often miss critical business requirements for compliance and data integrity.

Therefore, if you’re looking to migrate more than 500TB of data to the cloud, it may be wise to avoid free tools. Instead, consider an analytics-based, unstructured data management solution proven to deliver a faster, more secure, and more cost-effective migration process. You will gain a variety of other benefits as well.

The value of analytics-first data management for cloud migrations

What do we mean by analytics-first migrations? This requires getting insights on all your data across all storage so you can understand the following characteristics of your data:

Age and temperature of data: Is it hot, warm, or rarely accessed (cold)?
How quickly is your data growing, and which departments are most responsible for this data growth?
What are the common file types that you are storing and in what sizes? Do you have lots of small files? Do you have lots of multimedia files that are slower to move?
How much does it cost to store your data?
Do you know where personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive data is stored, and is it being properly managed?

This is just a starting list of getting a better handle on your unstructured data and its requirements. Once you have this information, then you can begin to make nuanced decisions. This will help you determine what to migrate and to which storage. For instance, frequently accessed files should live in high-performance storage, while cold data (which can be 80 percent of all data) can be tiered to lower-cost archival storage such as Azure Blob. By tiering the cold data first, you can focus your migration project on the warm and hot data.

Beyond cost efficiency, an analytics-driven migration strategy also supports long-term data lifecycle management. By continuously monitoring data usage and optimizing placement, you can adapt to evolving storage needs while maintaining compliance with regulations and security requirements. You’ll be able to then leverage all storage tiers available to you in the cloud and optimize your storage budget. Using an unstructured data management solution, you can set up plans to continuously and automatically tier data from hot to cold tiers in the cloud as it ages.

Benefits of Komprise Intelligent Data Management in Azure Marketplace

Komprise offers Komprise Intelligent Data Management in Azure Marketplace and is an original partner in the Azure File Data Migration program, dating to 2022. This program gives customers access to industry-leading file migration at no cost and complements the Azure Migrate portfolio, which customers use to automate and orchestrate the migration of servers, desktops, databases, and web applications to Azure.

Here are some of the benefits:

Analytics-driven planning lets you know exactly what you’re moving, what it’s costing, and how to optimize the process.
Scalable performance as Komprise is designed for multi-petabyte, multi-billion file migrations.
Visibility across NAS (e.g., NetApp, Dell, Windows) to identify which data sets to migrate and to which tier of Azure. You can also detect and mitigate sensitive data and ensure it’s stored in a secure location.
Systematically migrate files 25 times faster with our proprietary elastic data engine optimized for both small and large files over WAN.
Hybrid file tiering to right-size your migration, achieve cloud-native access, save on storage costs, and attain ransomware defense.
Ensure data integrity by migrating all file attributes and permissions with full MD5 checksums on every file.
Intelligent handling of failures: automatic retries and logging so you’re never blind to what’s happening.
Non-disruptive, live migrations: Komprise minimizes business impact by allowing access to data even during migration.
Komprise ACE (Assessment of Customer Environment) is included for all customers. It proactively identifies potential bottlenecks and other issues independent of Komprise that can derail your migration.