When you are deciding on a content migration tool to migrate data into the likes of Google Drive, SharePoint, Dropbox, or even block storage you need to consider the requirements of the tools and what is actually required before you can consider migrating a single file or user. A lot of tools require you to host their software within cloud infrastructure such as GCP, or Azure which induces further costs on top of the licensing cost you're already paying for. This also adds additional support complexity and creates barriers when it comes to migrating data.
Zero infrastructure is simple and scalable
Considering we're in a cloud era where infrastructure is scalable and dreams are endless, gone are the days when you have to manually spin up your own servers and run infrastructure to complete a task. Often software that requires you to do this was built pre-cloud and doesn't scale very well or play nicely with regards to scale.
Disadvantages of managing your own infrastructure
When it comes to managing someone else's software or infrastructure there are key points you have to take into account such as costs, managing compute nodes, time sinks, and updates and patching.
Cost
The cost of data transfer can be complicated depending on who you go with. It's all well paying for the license to migrate the data, often $1/GB or $10/User (that includes 10GB), however, you do have to take into account the cost of data transfer. Providers such as Amazon, Azure, and GCP prices range from 0.09 cents per GB up to 0.14 cents. If you're looking to migrate 5TB, this adds an additional $450 - $700 on top of the $5000 for the license to migrate.
Managing compute nodes
Additionally, when hosting your own data infrastructure you also have to pay for the compute nodes to actually serve the migration. Depending on compute size, how many you're running, and the time it takes to migrate, this price can easily add up to cost you more in the migration.
As mentioned before, the software you are running is not built optimally for the cloud, and due to this the time it takes to migrate even 5TB can be costly.
Time sinks
The other hidden cost that is often forgotten is time. The time it takes engineers to configure the environment ready to migrate, then the time in setting up the migration, implementing licenses, and looking at how they can fix faults should any arise, when you add an engineer's billable time to managing infrastructure, it really just puts more icing on the cake with regards to the cost to migrate.
Updates and Patching
When managing other companies' software, there are often things that crop up and delay or slow down the ability to move forward. In some cases, this could even be a Windows update due to the way the product has been built and what it runs on. Windows updates unfortunately can hinder the migration and at times cause it to be started all over again.
Overall managing infrastructure for data migrations, regardless if it is 100GB or 300TB, adds additional overhead, cost and complexity that shouldn't be an issue, especially in the era of cloud computing.
Movebot and Zero Infrastructure migrations
Movebot uses a zero infrastructure philosophy, providing a true SaaS tool for data agility and actionable insights, including data migrations. Due to this way Movebot is built, there is also the ability to easily push 6-20TB a day into the likes of Google Drive and have migrations run seamlessly and easily, and it only takes 5-10 minutes to have the migration configured and running.
Even if you have any failed files, you don't need to re-run the entire migration, you can simply just re-run those failed files to ensure the migration keeps moving forward.
When using Movebot there are no additional overheads, the cost per TB remains and you aren't paying for additional licenses, hosting costs, or worrying about a Windows update failing your migration.
Movebot has been built in a scalable, automated, and containerized manner like all modern SaaS platforms where all you need to do, is connect source and destination, map users. and click go. Real-time performance graphs let you see the status of your data-moving project, and a post-migration report lets you see if any files failed to transfer and why.
Plus it's simple, straightforward, and intuitive to use. Want to see it for yourself? You can sign up for a 14-day trial without a credit card and no product demo required. Simply sign up and go to get started.
