We get quite a few questions on this topic of migration to the cloud, so for example Project Server 2010 or Project Server 2013 to Project Online - and also moving data between tenants. Perhaps a trial to the real one – or even making a copy of production in another PWA instance in the same Project Online tenant. Unfortunately there are not any short cuts here. We don’t have any capability to move 2010 or 2013 databases up to our datacenters (the schema is now quite different – and we are in the content database…). Neither can we pull data out from one PWA instance and move it to another - either within the tenant or to another tenant. Also we have no means to move PWA to/from dedicated farms.
The options for migration are listed on the TechNet page that compares Project Server 2013 and Project Online - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn268595.aspx - A feature/function comparison of Project Online and Project Server 2013. Look around 1/4 of a way down the page:
The article does continue on to cover resource migration options too. If you are a partner with a solution we don’t suggest above then I’m sure we would be very pleased to update the list. If you have developer capabilities you could also use some of the programmatic interfaces and write your own migration package – see the SDK information at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30435 .
One of the challenges of using the manual methods is carrying over the metadata – particular where lookup table based fields are concerned. One potential option is even for lookup table fields to create another non lookup table field and copy in the data, so you can at least carry over the actual field setting – then use this in the new instance to re-set the lookup table values. Although we don’t endorse any of the 3rd party solutions it is certainly worth reviewing if they would help to give you a cost effective migration and help overcome some of these challenges. And with this next suggestion I’m not just trying to put a positive spin on things – but migration is a great time to reconsider how you have things configured – and if your current configuration is best serving your needs.