The telltale signs of a successful migration from Box to Google Drive are minimal disruption and a smooth adoption process for your end users. In this guide, we’ll walk through the key steps and considerations to keep in mind during the migration process using CloudM Migrate, a powerful tool that simplifies moving your data.
1. Prepare your source
Before diving into the migration, it’s crucial to prepare your source environment — in this case, Box — to avoid surprises that can cause issues down the road.
What to keep in mind
When migrating data from Box to Google Drive, there are several factors to consider to ensure a smooth transition:
Document permissions
Migrating permissions can be tricky. It’s important to ensure that shared folders, documents, and their permission levels are carried over correctly. CloudM Migrate can migrate documents with their associated permissions, so files will remain accessible to the same users.
Folder structure
Migrating your folder structure is crucial, especially for teams that rely heavily on file organization within Box. Fortunately, CloudM Migrate allows for the preservation of the folder hierarchy, ensuring everything remains as familiar as possible for end users.
Less is more – clean up before the move
A migration is an excellent opportunity to tidy up your data. Over time, files that are no longer relevant or necessary can clutter your storage and slow down progress. With CloudM Migrate, you can ensure only required data gets transferred by:
Targeting specific users or folders: you have the flexibility to migrate specific users or groups of users to a Shared Drive or personal account. CloudM Migrate also allows targeting a specific folder within a user’s Box account.
Applying date filters: to avoid moving unnecessary data, you can set date filters to migrate only files that were created or modified within a specific date range.
2. Consider the specifics of your destination
While Google Drive is a powerful and flexible platform, it’s important to understand its limitations to avoid any issues post-migration.
Google Shared Drive object limits
As of July 2024, Shared Drives in Google Workspace have expanded capabilities. Shared Drives can now have:
- 100 levels of nested folders
- Up to 500,000 items
While this increased limit provides more flexibility, it’s essential to keep track of how deep and complex your folder structures are during the migration to avoid hitting these limits.
Google folder depth limit
Google Drive limits the depth of folder structures, which could be a concern if your current Box environment has extremely deep folder trees. Although Shared Drives now allow for up to 100 levels of nesting, consider simplifying your folder hierarchy where possible to make navigation more intuitive for your team.
3. Execute the migration
Once your source environment is prepared and you’ve considered the limitations of your destination, it’s time for the actual migration.
1. Configure the source
When using CloudM Migrate, you’ll authenticate Box using JWT (JSON Web Token) authentication, which is a more secure method than some alternatives. This ensures that your data transfer is encrypted and secure during the migration process.
2. Configure the destination
Next, you’ll configure Google Drive as the destination. Ensure that permissions are set properly and that Shared Drives or user accounts are ready to receive the data.
3. Select items
At this stage, you can choose which users to migrate from Box to Google Drive. This could be individual users, groups of users, or all users across your organization.
4. Select content
Here, you’ll specify which data you want to migrate, whether it’s all user data or only specific files. This step allows you to filter content based on the user or folder.
5. Scan the environment
Running a scan of both the Box and Google Drive environments is essential to identify any potential issues, such as file size limits, unsupported file types, or naming conflicts.
6. Run the migration
Once the environment scan is complete, it’s time to run the migration. CloudM Migrate handles the heavy lifting, transferring data securely from Box to Google Drive.
7. Review the results
After the migration is complete, it’s important to review the results and ensure all data, permissions, and structures were transferred correctly. This is where you’ll verify that everything is in place for a smooth transition.
8. Run delta migrations
To ensure you haven’t missed any changes or updates that occurred during the migration window, run one or several delta migrations. This will capture any files that were modified or created after the initial migration began.
Conclusion
Migrating from Box to Google Drive is a critical task for any organization looking to streamline its cloud storage. By following these steps and utilizing CloudM Migrate, you can ensure a smooth and efficient migration process that keeps your data, permissions, and structures intact while avoiding common pitfalls.
If you are facing a particularly complex migration scenario or simply don’t have the internal resource and experience to tackle your upcoming migration project alone, CloudM are happy to help. We offer serviced migrations as well as customer-led consultancy workshops to ensure your success.
About Version 2 Digital
Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
About CloudM
CloudM is an award-winning SaaS company whose humble beginnings in Manchester have grown into a global business in just a few short years.
Our team of tech-driven innovators have designed a SaaS data management platform for you to get the most from your digital workspace. Whether it’s Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or other SaaS applications, CloudM drives your business through a simple, easy-to-use interface, helping you to work smarter, not harder.
By automating time-consuming tasks like IT admin, onboarding & offboarding, archiving and migrations, the CloudM platform takes care of the day-to-day, allowing you to focus on the big picture.
With over 35,000 customers including the likes of Spotify, Netflix and Uber, our all-in-one platform is putting office life on auto-pilot, saving you time, stress and money.
