Forum Discussion
SharePoint online as File Server
I have a case study for replacing a NAS server of around 3TB of data. At first, I was thinking at Azure Files as a replacement. I would allow us to re-create the file share as it is today.
However, some little birds told me about SP Online. I was wondering : even with a tool, uploading 3TB of data trough Internet doesn't seem like a good idea. Does anyone have any experience with sending Hard Drive to Microsoft so they can do the copy ? After that, we could check any delta with a tool and limit the size of the uploads.
As has been mentioned, there is no option to send hard drives for SharePoint Online migrations. This used to be available but was https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2015/09/16/office-365-import-service-migration-to-sharepoint-online-and-onedrive-for-business-just-became-easier/ a while back. This is still an option for https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/securitycompliance/use-drive-shipping-to-import-pst-files-to-office-365 to Office 365.
3TB is a lot of data, while SPO can accommodate this and more, usually, a data cleansing exercise beforehand can pay dividends by removing duplicates files, finding legacy content and looking at how the data is organized so it can be suitable migrated.
The free https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointmigration/introducing-the-sharepoint-migration-tool is very good and well worth checking out, though tools like Sharegate, have extra features, with pricing starting from around $4K or equivalent. Might be worth having a look at this recent Ignite session - https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/65758.