How to Migrate Enterprise Vault to Microsoft 365

Many organizations realize that the cost of maintaining a legacy archiving system like Enterprise Vault is increasing year on year. This is also a pain point if your user population has already migrated from Exchange on-premise to Exchange Online (Microsoft 365).

Key Takeaways

• Many organizations are facing increasing costs for maintaining a legacy archiving system like Enterprise Vault. This can be a pain point if users have already migrated from Exchange on-premise to Exchange Online (Microsoft 365).
• There are different layers of costs to consider when maintaining an on-premise environment for Enterprise Vault: IT staff time, Enterprise Vault license maintenance costs, SQL Server and licensing, Enterprise Vault servers, archive and index storage, and legal staff time.
• Migrating Enterprise Vault to Microsoft 365 can help curb some of these increasing costs and make life easier for users and legal teams.
• There are two approaches to migrating legacy Enterprise Vault archived data to Microsoft 365: manual/tools or using a full-featured Enterprise Vault migration tool.

In a previous blog we talked about upcoming changes to licensing and libraries that might impact such a migration. In another previous blog, we discussed that these costs consist of many layers. Here’s a recap of them:

• IT Staff time to manage/update / patch / troubleshoot
• Enterprise Vault License Maintenance costs (if you are not paying maintenance, you are risking your data and the ability to respond to legal inquiries)
• Enterprise Vault SQL Server and licensing
• Enterprise Vault Servers
• Archive and Index Storage
• Legal Staff time to search, cull and produce data for eDiscovery in two data repositories (instead of one)

None of them seems simple to solve and maintain the on-premise environment for Enterprise Vault.

Addressing each of those concerns gives you the answer to the question, “Why should I migrate Enterprise Vault to Microsoft 365?” Not only do you want to curb some of the increases (year on year) in costs, but you also want to give users and legal teams an easier life.

So, your organization might have concluded that you need to migrate the archived data from Enterprise Vault to Microsoft 365.

The question is:

How does my organization migrate all the legacy Enterprise Vault archived data to Microsoft 365?

Essentially, there are two approaches:

• Manual / tools
• Full-featured Enterprise Vault Migration Tool / Product / Solution

Let’s go into each of these in some more detail.

Manual / Enterprise Vault Migration Tools

This approach consists of two steps: Extracting the data to PST and getting that PST data into Microsoft 365.

To extract the data to PST, you would use the Enterprise Vault Export Archive Wizard. This gives you a few options when it comes to exporting the data. For example, you can export items that are younger than a particular age, or have a particular retention category, or from a specific folder. Of course, you can also export the whole archive. The tool can’t do everything for you though. If you have SharePoint archives or public folder archives, you can’t use the Export Archive Wizard.

When it comes to importing the data from the enterprise vault to Microsoft 365, there are two options:

PST Importer via Network

• Upload the PST files created by the Export Archive Wizard over the network to a temporary Azure storage location.
• Use the Microsoft 365 Import Service to import the PST data to mailboxes in your Microsoft 365 tenant.

Whilst this enterprise vault migration tool is free, there may be daily upload limits when adding the data to Azure, and using Azure to store the PST data might incur data transfer and storage costs.

Drive Shipping

• Copy the PST files that were created by the Export Archive Wizard to BitLocker encrypted hard drives.
• Physically ship the drives to Microsoft.
• Microsoft personnel will upload the data to a temporary Azure storage location.
• Use the Microsoft 365 Import Service to import the PST data to mailboxes in your Microsoft 365 tenant.

This approach is not free; Microsoft charges in the region of $2000 per terabyte. This approach also has the extra complexity of having hard drives in transit, sometimes for an extended period, and you wouldn’t want to delete the data from your on-premise ‘copy’ of PST files until the end to end process has been completed.

It’s also worth considering the associated tasks that come with this approach in terms of managing the task overall and reporting on the progress of the migration. There are also associated tasks on Enterprise Vault and on Microsoft 365 that would also need to be done manually.

Full-featured Enterprise Vault Migration Tool

Several tools on the market do a lot more than the manual steps listed above. Consider that there is much more to the overall migration than copying the data, as we covered in another blog. As a quick recap, these are just some of the things that we think your organization will need to do to successfully complete a migration project from Enterprise Vault to Microsoft 365:

• Progress reporting. How the project is moving forward and any related or unresolved issues.
• User communication. Keep users up to date as to what is happening with their data.
• Preparing to move the data repositories. If you’re moving legacy data from Enterprise Vault to Microsoft 365, some tasks should be performed to ensure a smooth transformation.
• Copying the data.
• Performing tasks on Microsoft 365. For example, setting mailbox quotas or message size limits, enabling personal archive mailboxes, or assigning licenses.
• Performing tasks on Enterprise Vault. For example, deleting Enterprise Vault email shortcuts to tidy up the mailbox.

Which Approach Is Best?

It’s easy to see that the manual approach of copying the data will be prone to errors and cumbersome for an IT or infrastructure team to perform. There is also so much more than just copying the data that a full-featured Enterprise Vault migration tool should be able to do to ensure the whole project is handled end-to-end.

At Cloudficient, we’ve got all these things covered, and much more, in EVComplete. It’s based on our ReMAD platform and is a 100% cloud-based Enterprise Vault migration tool with minimal on-premise requirements. At the heart of the platform is a workflow orchestration engine that has over 100 individual steps that can be combined and customized to suit your project requirements. They do all those associated tasks that will mean your migration will be successful.

Get Started Today

At Cloudficient, we spend a lot of time ensuring that enterprise vault migration, onboarding, expiration and other enterprise transformation projects have as much risk removed as possible. That’s why we always suggest doing a proof of concept, with your users, in your environment with your data.

With unmatched next generation migration technology, Cloudficient is revolutionizing the way businesses retire legacy systems and transform their organization into the cloud. With an emphasis on enterprise vault to Microsoft 365 migration, our business constantly remains focused on client needs and creating product offerings that match them. We provide affordable services that are scalable, fast and seamless.

If you would like to learn more about how to bring Cloudficiency to your enterprise vault migration project, visit our website, or contact us.