What experience do you have with SharePoint migration tools ? Which ones the best, easiest to use, best value for money ?
Reason for asking is I am considering doing a special newsletter which compares and contrasts them, but don’t have the experience with all of them… So if you have used one, let me know your thoughts and share as much as possible…
UPDATE! Since asking this there are now two articles on here that really help. Here is a fantastic SharePoint Migration Tool Comparison report put together by Alex Dove and this guide helps you select a good SharePoint Migration Tool.
We’ve also created a new category on our directory that lists virtually all of them. Best Office 365 Migration Tools.
Thanks in advance, Mark
Hello Mark, I have done a session on this at SPS Oslo, also have done this upgrade from 2007 – 2013, many times, but I don’t have one document that describes all the approaches, but it’s a very good idea to make one, so I think I will just make it.
I would look at ShareGate probably, it looks simple, has was you need, most of them uses the same web services so the different in the products are very small, so go with the one which is easier, and also have great support system. My experience with Quest (Dell) was not the best, but all depends on planning, and testing. But I see no point in writing code when others already have done it for you. The pricing usually is not to bad either. What I probably would have done, is to test 1-2 products, to be sure they have all you need.Â
I had problems with migrating the metadata, but that was because the users changed at the same time. the domain was different. And since you probably should go with claims authentication it would be the same scenario here, the user profiles will be different then from 2007, the token is different.
Have you tested to see if the last edited by, or checked out to, will maintain from the source site to the target site?Â
So my point is, you have to test before to be sure that all problems are covered.Â
Knut…I need to know the innards of upgrade. from 2007, 2010, 2013 and all combinations upwards. Is there a good document that prescribes all approaches from 1 to the next, Unsupported and supported ?
My experience it really depends what and where you should migrate to, OnPremise, SharePoint Online.
I checked some products; Metavis, Quest, Metalogix when I had a project migrating to Office 365 (SharePoint online) from SharePoint 2007, and it just gave me a big headache. We landed on Quest, but I had to manually create every SiteCollection, activate the features, and then I could copy the data, just that since the users was different, I also had to create a mapping file for the users. So to be able to use this product you had to invest alot of hours in learning how it works. The clients project of course also used the Fabulous 30 templates from Microsoft and that didn’t make the migration any easier.
I recently purchased and am currently using Dell SharePoint Deployment Manager (they made an official announcemnt today 06.04.13 that they are dropping Quest and using Dell only from now on…) to migrate from WSS 3.0 to SPS 2013 EE. I have nothing but good things to say so far. It copies lists, libraries, Sites, Site Collections, workflows, solutions (all which I have done successfully). It also does a live compare and you can copy over only selected items. So, as I prepare to go live in the 2013 environment, I will do a live compare of sites and update before throwing the switch. You can also say “any changes after a certain date” but I prefer to select manually.
Post activity reports/details… you can import data from CSV files as well but I haven’t done that, not sure I ever will.
I thought it was a reasonable price, especially now as the migration has been stress free and accurate (so far)….
Needless to say, I’m a happy customer.
