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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.
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.
It wasn’t quite the simple, quick ‘lift and shift’ plan we’d intended, but we delivered all the same.
We batched migrations to ensure user access wasn’t disrupted - migrating 50 users each night, equivalent to 250GB worth of data
We batched migrations to ensure user access wasn’t disrupted - migrating 50 users each night, equivalent to 250GB worth of data
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.
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.
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.
We've now future-proofed their dat, 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 need to contact IT to get the right access.
We couldn’t be happier with the professional service boxxe provided. We wanted to migrate all of our data onto Microsoft’s secure cloud-based environment in the easiest way possible and they delivered.
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