OneDrive for Business to OneDrive GCC High/China Migration Guide

This guide is for migrations from OneDrive for Business to OneDrive GCC High/China. The source must be OneDrive for Business and the destination must be OneDrive GCC High/China - not the personal OneDrive version. GCC High/China OneDrive migrations do not utilize Azure Storage for the destination endpoint.

First migration?

We have created a guide on scoping, planning, and managing the migration process. If this is your first migration, we recommend reading this guide carefully.

MigrationWiz

MigrationWiz is a migration tool, not a syncing tool. If changes are made at the source after migration, they will not sync to the destination, nor will changes made at the destination sync to the source. We do not have “live” monitoring of changes (as with a sync agent) and cannot handle scenarios such as conflict resolution without user interaction.

MigrationWiz supports the capability to share migration projects across a Workgroup. When the Project Sharing feature is turned on, all Agents besides those who are Inactive can view all migration projects. 

We are not able to support migrations with two-factor or multifactor authentication. 

Prerequisites

It is important to highlight and meet the following prerequisites for a smooth migration project.

Licensing

Purchase and apply User Migration Bundle licenses for all the users being migrated. For this migration type, we suggest the User Migration Bundle. For questions on licensing, visit MigrationWiz Licenses.

  • User Migration Bundle Licenses have unlimited data available per license.
  • User Migration Bundle Licenses are applied to the customer's users and expire 12 months after their purchase date. 
  • Document, Personal Archive, and DeploymentPro projects are all included when using User Migration Bundle Licenses.
  • This license type must be applied manually.

To use your license by following the next steps:

  1. Purchase Licenses.
  2. Create a Customer.
  3. Apply Licenses.
  4. Review Considerations.
Purchase Licenses Create a Customer Apply Licenses Considerations

Purchase licenses by following the steps below:

  1. Sign in to your BitTitan account. 
  2. In the top navigation bar, click Purchase.
  3. Click the Select button and choose User Migration Bundle licenses.
  4. Enter the number of licenses you want to purchase. Click Buy Now.
  5. Enter a Billing address if applicable.
  6. Click Next.
  7. Review the Order Summary and enter a payment method.
  8. Click Place Your Order.

Limitations

  • App password usage, MFA/2FA, and ADFS are not supported for the migration admin account/service account being used by this endpoint.
  • Due to limitations on connections allowed by GoDaddy, we do not support migrating to or from GoDaddy using this migration type.
  • Migration of Versions and Metadata is not supported for GCC High/China.
  • This endpoint does not support the User's personal site provisioning. The AO DestPersonalSiteIsProvisioned=1 must be used. Refer to Advanced Option.
  • Due to versioning forced by the destination, storage usage in OneDrive may be increased when migrating with permissions.
  • Note that OneDrive data may not be accessible for a few days after migration, due to OneDrive's crawling and indexing process. We suggest you have your users log in immediately after migration but let them know that their data may not be available for a short period. For this reason, it may be best to complete the migration on a Friday so the indexing can happen over the weekend.

Prepare the Source Environment

BitTitan uses app-based authentication for commercial SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, Microsoft 365 Groups (Documents), and Teams endpoints. This provides greater security and reduces the potential of Microsoft throttling. It replaces the previous Microsoft 365 authentication, which has been subject to increased throttling by Microsoft. This app-based authentication method is specific for Microsoft 365 tenants. Using this option, including steps for uninstalling, can be found outlined here: App based authentication using Application Permissions for SharePoint and OneDrive Migrations.

Enable App-based Authentication Permissions

  1. Ensure you are signed in as a Global Admin.
  2. Go to MigrationWiz-SharePoint-FullControl and consent to the app access when prompted. Once you click on Accept, you will be redirected to the BitTitan login page. This is normal and the page can be closed.

  3. Create a new security group named MigrationWiz in the Office 365 Admin Portal. (The name of the security group must be an exact match)

  4. Create a new user that is not having data migrated in the project. This account does not require any administrator roles to be assigned. (If you already have an existing user, that should be fine) This user must have a SharePoint/OneDrive license applied.

  5. Add the new (or existing) user to the previously created security group as a Member (Adding as an Owner will not work here).

  6. Create MigrationWiz project.

  7. When creating the source and destination endpoints, enter the user credentials of step 4 that correspond to the endpoint the user belongs to.

  8. Add the support option UseApplicationPermissionAtSource=1 to the advanced options of the MigrationWiz project under Support Options.

Export Users

Export the list of OneDrive for Business user accounts to a CSV file. This can be used when adding users on the Destination, and when adding the users to the project in MigrationWiz. 

Prepare the Destination Environment

Enable Delegated App Permissions

GCC High endpoints require using delegated permissions. The easiest approach is to use the global administrator account set up at the time of tenant creation. However, if you do not wish to use this global admin account during migration, you can create a new user account instead. This new account will then need a license assigned, including a OneDrive for Business, and be granted either Global Administrator permissions or SharePoint Administrator privileges.

Important

We strongly recommend you use an administrator account that is not being migrated to avoid missing shared permissions.

Process

  1. Create a user in Microsoft 365 and assign a license that includes OneDrive for Business. For step-by-step instructions, see the Microsoft article Add users and assign licenses at the same time.
  2. Grant the new user Global Administrator permissions or SharePoint Administrator rights in Microsoft 365.
  3. Grant Site Collection Administrator privileges to the user OneDrives in the destination being migrated in the project. 
  4. Ensure the administrator account is not set to use MFA, 2FA, or app password.
  5. Go to MigrationWiz-SharePoint-Delegated for GCC High tenants (This will install the app via login at https://login.microsoftonline.us) and consent to the app access when prompted. Once you click on Accept, you will be redirected to the BitTitan login page. This is normal and the page can be closed.
  6. Add the support option UseApplicationPermissionAtDestination=0 to the advanced options of the MigrationWiz project under Support Options.

After you perform these steps, the specified user will be visible in the Microsoft 365 administrator center. Full provisioning of the user account can take up to 24 hours.

MigrationWiz Steps

Create a Document Project

  1. Log in to MigrationWiz.
  2. Click the Go to My Projects button.
  3. Click the Create Project button.
  4. Select the Document project type. 
  5. Click Next Step.
  6. Enter a Project name and select a Customer.
  7. Click Next Step.

Endpoints

Endpoints are created through MigrationWiz. If you select an existing endpoint from the dropdown, it will only show ten endpoints. If you have more than ten, you may need to search it.

Consider that endpoint search is case and character-specific. For example, Cust0mer will not show up if the search is customer. We recommend keeping a list of endpoints you have created and any unique spellings or capitalization you may have used.

You may either use existing endpoints or create new ones. 

Create your Endpoints

Please review the following tabs to create your destination and source endpoints.

Source Endpoint Destination Endpoint

Create your source endpoint by following the next steps:

  1. Click Endpoints.
  2. Click New.
  3. Select OneDrive for Business
  4. Select migration type OneDrive for Business.
  5. Leave the Provide Credentials option selected and complete the Administrator Username and Password in the proper fields.
  6. Click Add Endpoint

Region of Destination Tenant

MigrationWiz displays a dropdown to select the Preferred Region of the Tenant at the destination endpoint. This value updates the Preferred Region of the Destination Tenant field in the project's Advanced Options, and vice versa. You will notice that both values are always the same.

The Region of Destination Tenant feature optimizes the migration performance and speed when choosing the region closest to the destination tenant.

Tip

You can find the region of your destination tenant directly in the Microsoft Entra admin center by going to Identity > Overview > Properties, and using the Country or region or the Data location.

Country or region.png

For more information on this topic, review this article. In case you need the multi-geo information you can refer to this article.

Warning

If you do not complete this field you will not be able to save your project and the “This field cannot be left blank.” error will appear.

Add Users

Add the user accounts that will be migrated to the project. MigrationWiz allows you to bulk import users into the system.

You may use Bulk Add, Quick Add, or add the accounts to the MSPComplete customer. 

Quick Add
This option allows you to add items one at a time. To do so, you only have to provide an email address if you entered administrative credentials when setting up the project. If you did not, enter the following user information:
  • An email address
  • Login name
  • Password
  • Mailbox status
Bulk Add

Bulk Add uses a CSV containing the source and destination email addresses for the users to add the users to the project. If migrating only a specific group from a tenant, we recommend using the Bulk Add option.

MigrationWiz allows you to bulk import mailboxes into the system.

To import one or more mailboxes:

  1. Sign in to your MigrationWiz account.
  2. Select the Project for which you want to perform the bulk import.
  3. Click Add.
  4. Click Bulk Add.
  5. Follow the instructions on the page.

Run Verify Credentials

  1. ​Sign in to your MigrationWiz account​
  2. Open the Project containing items you wish to validate.
  3. Select the items you wish to validate.
  4. Click the Start button in your dashboard.
  5. Select Verify Credentials from the drop-down list.

Once complete, you can review the verification results in the Status section.​ 

To lock (set to ReadOnly) the OneDrive items before migration: 

  1. Make sure all OneDrive line items are not locked.

  2. Run Verify Credentials pass for all OneDrive line items. This will add the provided credentials as a site collection administrator for these items.

  3. You can now lock all the OneDrive line items.

  4. Run a full migration pass.

Notify Users

Notify users that a migration is occurring. Send an email to all users telling them the time and date of the migration.

Advanced Options

Support Tab

Add the following options in the Advanced Options and Support Options tabs (if needed). 

  • For non-standard URL endpoints, add OneDriveProExportAdminUrl=<non standard URL> and OneDriveProImportAdminUrl=<non standard URL>. (Replace "<non standard URL>" with your custom URL.) 
  • InitializationTimeout=8 - This increases the initialization timeout window to eight hours. This is especially useful for large migrations.
  • IncreasePathLengthLimit=1 - Use this Advanced Option in MigrationWiz to enable the use of 400 characters for the file path name. OneDrive limits characters in file path names, which can cause errors when migrating folder structures.
    • BitTitan has no limitations to the number of folders per migration. Microsoft sets any folder limits.
    • There are no spaces on either side of the "=" sign, and the entries are case-sensitive, so pay special attention to the capital letters in the commands above.

  • If migrating to a GCC High US Government Tenant, add:
    OneDriveProImportEnvironment=AzureUSGovernment

  • If migrating to a China Tenant, add:
    OneDriveProImportEnvironment=AzureChinaCloud

  • DestPersonalSiteIsProvisioned=1
    • For OneDrive users to specify a destination personal site has already been provisioned so MigrationWiz will use App-based authentication for OneDrive personal site retrieval instead of basic authentication.
  • MapPermissionEmailByPairsInProject=1
    • Use this advanced option only for OneDrive/Google Drive at the destination in scenarios where usernames change during a migration, you will need to run the following command to ensure permissions map to the new username. For example user@domain.com to firstinitial.lastname@domain.com.

      Important

      Permissions generally cannot be migrated unless the prefix of the mail address is the same in the source and the destination. However, choosing Support Option MapPermissionEmailByPairsInProject=1 will allow permissions to be migrated without identical mail addresses.

Notifications Tab

Set the Advanced Option to send a notification to end users after the migration pass completes. (This is optional.) To set up the notification:

  1. Click Notifications.
  2. Click Send successful migration and notification to:
  3. Select the Source email address (if users are still using the source Microsoft 365 tenant) or the Destination email address (if users are already using the Destination Microsoft 365 tenant).

Customize notification email:

  1. Checkmark the Customize "successful migration" email option.
  2. Add your own customization text and company name to this email.
  3. Notifications should only be set up before the final pass. Please consider the following cases to set up this setting:
    • Set this up now if performing a single, Full pass.
    • Only set this up before the final Full (Delta) pass when following a Pre-Stage migration strategy.

If the migration project is a long-term project, an Advanced Option may be necessary during the final migration pass to verify previously migrated items. For more information, contact Support.

Filtering Tab

  • Excluding OneNote Files

Please be aware that OneNote does not support versioning. To avoid creating duplicate content, it is crucial to migrate your OneNote files just once. Each subsequent migration attempt could result in new versions of your OneNote files being generated as separate new files.

To prevent this, we advise filtering out OneNote files during various stages of the migration process by adding one in the Advanced Options. Consider excluding OneNote files during the Trial Migration and Pre-Stage Migration. 

FilteringAO.png

We recommend only including them in the final Full Migration stage to ensure a smooth and efficient migration process. To ensure the successful migration of OneNote folders and files, particularly after initially excluding them, it is necessary to remove the one extension from the filtering tab in the Advanced Options.

Run Migration

We suggest skipping the pre-stage pass and only performing the full migration for small migrations. However, we recommend performing the pre-stage migration for large migrations with more than fifty users.

Recent changes to the Dropbox APIs prevent us from adding watermarks on files in the Destination Dropbox accounts. Therefore, if you perform a partial migration, reset the items in MigrationWiz, and then perform the migration again, you will end up with duplicate files at the Destination. If you must rerun the migration, first delete all files already migrated to the Destination Dropbox accounts.

Pre-Stage Pass

  1. Select the users to migrate.
  2. Click the Start button from the top.
  3. Select Pre-Stage Migration.
  4. Under the Migration Scheduling section, from the drop-down list, select 90 days ago.
  5. Click Start Migration.

Full pass

  1. Select the users.
  2. Click the Start button from the top.
  3. Select Full Migration.
  4. Click Start Migration.

Run Retry Errors

Look through the user list and click any red "failed migration" errors. Review the information and act accordingly.

If problems persist contact Support.

Request Statistics

Click the pie chart icon in the MigrationWiz dashboard to receive an email containing all the project migration statistics.

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