It was great having DocAve available – otherwise, I don’t know how this migration could be completed successfully on time given the fact that the migration window was quite tight.
ATPI outsourced the upgrade of its existing Microsoft SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 environment to SharePoint 2010 to AvePoint partner KPN Consulting. The primary use of SharePoint for ATPI was to support collaboration and information sharing across the various offices within the company.
End-user data was dispersed across four web applications hosting 36 site collections in 10 content databases, with an approximate total size of 460 gigabytes (GB). After the upgrade and migration, all site collections needed to be consolidated into a single web application in order to reduce support and maintenance effort for the environment.
Besides upgrading ATPI’s SharePoint environment, other project objectives that KPN Consulting helped with included improvements in user authentication (from both internal and external locations), navigation across site collections, and findability of content.
The initial approach was to use the Microsoft database attach methods and restructure the data using built-in Windows PowerShell cmdlets to export and import data. During the first production upgrade attempt, the upgraded site collections and underlying document libraries were ready to be restructured to match the new structure of a single web application and site collections for each team.
A first attempt was made to restructure the upgraded site collections and underlying content, located in a single document library consisting of 400,000 items with sub folders for each department using SharePoint’s native tools for exporting and importing. These tools did not provide the expected flexibility and performance to successfully complete the data migration within the service window, which was one weekend.
SharePoint’s native exporting and importing tools were not designed to relocate specific folders – including underlying subfolders with more than 10,000 documents – from the old document library to the new document libraries in separate site collections for each team and department within a reasonable timeframe. Because of this, an alternative needed be found quickly to finalize the migration for ATPI.
In need of a robust solution for the data migration, ATPI’s technology partner KPN Consulting turned to AvePoint for support. KPN Consulting implemented AvePoint’s DocAve Content Manager to help with the job. Part of the DocAve Software Platform – the enterprise-class management platform for SharePoint governance – DocAve Content Manager comprehensively moves, copies, and restructures SharePoint sites, content, and topology within or across SharePoint environments. Through a centralized, highly intuitive management console, featuring familiar ribbon-based controls and step-by-step guidance via wizards, administrators can seamlessly manage and restructure SharePoint content with minimal interruption to business processes.
Using DocAve, 18 separate jobs for each folder relocation (in some cases merging them into the target document library) could be combined to be executed either sequentially or parallel in a group plan, creating a migration approach that fit the available service window. DocAve’s full-fidelity data migration capabilities allowed both the metadata and security settings to be preserved throughout each of the content movement jobs.
As this procedure was first thoroughly tested to optimize the processing time, the final approach included a baseline migration of all content, followed by a second migration of new and changed content several weeks later. DocAve supported this scenario by splitting up 400,000 documents and related folders into new sites and document libraries within the prescribed service window.
Due to the rich set of functionality in DocAve Content Manager, ATPI was able to restructure the data in the upgraded platform to a new structure and navigation within a short time frame, increasing the adoption of SharePoint 2010 by the existing end-user community and providing a framework to onboard new teams and departments.
Without DocAve, the data structuring would have resulted in a long-term, post-upgrade activity consuming significant time of the IT department to finalize the move to SharePoint 2010. “It was great having DocAve available – otherwise, I don’t know how this migration could be completed successfully on time given the fact that the migration window was quite tight,” said Miljenko Cvijanovic, Head of Group IT at ATPI Group.
ATPI is among the world’s leading travel management companies. Employing 1,200 people in more than 60 offices worldwide and headquartered in London, the ATPI group has successful operations in corporate travel, corporate event management, online travel technology, and specialist travel management for a number of key industries including the energy and shipping sectors.
It was great having DocAve available – otherwise, I don’t know how this migration could be completed successfully on time given the fact that the migration window was quite tight.