Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

Customer success story

Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist provider of health services, including mental health services, neurodevelopmental services, children’s health services, drug and alcohol recovery services and gambling support services across the county and surrounding areas. With over 3,000 employees they serve a combined population of around one million people. 

 Results_

Sizeable data migration

 8TB of data 

It wasn’t quite the simple, quick ‘lift and shift’ plan we’d intended, but we delivered all the same.

Undisrupted access

 50 users per night 

We batched migrations to ensure user access wasn’t disrupted - migrating 50 users each night, equivalent to 250GB worth of data. 

Future-proofed networks

 NHS digital compliant 

Thanks to a quick and secure OneDrive and Teams migration, the Trust’s data is future-proofed against the MS 2012 server shutdown, and compliant with NHS Digital.

It wasn’t quite the simple, quick ‘lift and shift’ plan we’d intended, but we delivered all the same; migrating a total of 8TB of data!

Within the time constraints set by the trust, bandwidth constraints, and Microsoft’s own migration limitations (throttling rules which protect the reliability and availability of the service) we had to batch the migrations to ensure user access wasn’t disrupted.  This equated to migrating 50 users each night – about 250GB worth of data.

Thanks to this OneDrive and Teams migration, we’ve now future-proofed their data, ahead of the MS 2012 server shutdown.  And in line with our mission to make tech work for everyone, we’ve given stakeholders the tools to take ownership of their data.  With the data filed in different groups within Teams, each department head holds responsibility for it – no more running to IT when you can’t get the right access! 

Overall, the project was a great success and we’re really proud of our team and the agility they showed when faced with unforeseen challenges. 

What did we do?

Challenge_

Lots of stakeholders = lots of data.  And a file server bursting at its data-holding seams!

Not only was the trust getting charged for the privilege, but their server was also hurtling towards retirement.  So, with a server decommission already in the pipeline, it was time to move their data from the existing server into a Microsoft 365 SharePoint.

Plan_

As MS SharePoint accredited experts, boxxe was chosen to deliver a solution in the fastest, most efficient and cost-effective way possible.

The solution was pretty simple; move the existing user and shared network data on the file server into SharePoint and OneDrive.

To do this we used Quest Essentials, which is a compliant and super slick tool for migrating files to newer versions of SharePoint.  It also integrates with NHS Digital smoothly, which will help the trust later down the line when decommissioning the server.

Outcome_

We've now future-proofed their data, ahead of the Microsoft 2012 server shutdown.  Trust stakeholders also have the tools to take ownership of their data, and with the data filled in different groups within Teams, each department head holds responsibiity for it - no more running to IT when you can't get the right access.

Approach_

We followed the PRINCE2 methodology, starting with an initial meeting to set expectations, confirm deliverables and identify possible risks – security being a high priority. 

Since NHS Digital is a managed provider, shared network data can’t be migrated with the appropriate security measures.  As experts in defence-level security, compliance and regulatory requirements, moving data with those measures was a risk we were not willing to take.  

So, we had to split the project in two parts: 
Phase 1 – Migrate services to OneDrive for personal network drives (individual OneDrive subscriptions already have security measures) 
Phase 2 – Migrate services to Microsoft Teams for shared network drives 

Then it was time to get migrating.

Firstly, we ran data analytics through Quest to identify the quantity of existing data, its age and if there were any duplicates, corrupt files or ones that OneDrive does not support.  This allowed us to implement file exclusions during the migration. 

We then moved onto the migration itself.  Avoiding business disruption was key, so we had to schedule migration jobs to run outside of business hours.  We also had weekly calls with the trust to identify any issues, plan mitigations and alternatives, to keep the project on track.  

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