You’ve chosen a new email archive, compared the costs and pencilled in a migration date. Then someone asks how the hundreds of terabytes in your existing archive are going to get out.
That’s the question to ask before you promise a date. If you’re leaving Arctera / EV.Cloud, exporting your existing data deserves a place in the plan from the start. Treat it as an afterthought and the rest of the project can end up waiting for it.
Choosing the new platform is the house-hunting bit. You’ve still got to organise the removals.
When a customer faced a 1% monthly export cap
We recently saw one customer try to export its own data from Arctera / EV.Cloud. Arctera responded by applying a restriction that capped data exports at 1% per month.
That’s one customer’s experience, with a clear planning lesson: establish the export arrangements that apply to your organisation before committing to a completion date.
If the amount you can extract is restricted, the migration schedule needs to reflect it. Having a new archive ready at the other end doesn’t increase the amount the source will release.
Ask about permitted volumes, how limits are measured and any conditions affecting access during a move. Get those answers while there’s time to plan around them.
How long does moving hundreds of terabytes take
Archive size is a starting point. You also need to know how much data the export route can deliver over time. A fast network connection won’t answer that question on its own.
Take a hypothetical 300TB archive. At an effective export rate of 1TB a day, getting that data out takes 300 days. Those figures illustrate the calculation; your forecast needs a measured rate for your own archive.
Even that calculation only covers extraction. Preparation, interruptions, retries, destination intake and final checks need time in the plan too. Some activities may run together, but the completion date must account for the whole job.
Measure the data volume and message count, then test a representative sample. Find out what completes successfully over a useful period, including how exceptions affect progress. A brief burst of speed makes a poor basis for promising a finish date.
The useful estimate comes from the estate and the export arrangements you’re working with. Hundreds of terabytes deserve more than a hopeful line in a project spreadsheet.
Build the exit plan before the deadline looms
Start the export conversation while you’re assessing the move. By the time a renewal or access deadline is close, you may have fewer workable scheduling options.
Bring the people responsible for IT, the migration project and the commercial arrangements into the same conversation. Then work through five questions:
- What needs to move? Confirm the archive scope, volume and message count. Include historical data belonging to former users where it’s required.
- What export arrangements apply? Establish any volume or rate limits, how they’re measured and what access you’ll need throughout the move.
- What rate can you sustain? Test a representative sample and use the results to build a realistic forecast, allowing for exceptions.
- What else needs time? Include destination intake and checks. Decide how you’ll handle any new data arriving while the migration is running.
- What will count as complete? Agree the evidence needed to accept the migration and the conditions for retiring the previous archive.
Put renewal dates and any access cut-offs alongside that plan. If the timings don’t line up, resolve the gap while you still have room to act.
Exported data still needs checking
Receiving export files is an important milestone. You’ll still need to confirm that the destination has accepted the required data and that the results match the agreed scope.
Agree how failures, omissions and retries will be recorded and reviewed. If different parts of the archive are moving on different schedules, make sure the final checks cover all of them.
That gives your team a clear basis for reviewing the outcome. It’s much easier to define the evidence at the beginning than discover a new definition of ‘finished’ at the final meeting.
How eMXport helps you plan the move
eMXport is our platform for fully managed email archive migrations. We use tried and tested methods, with the migration shaped around your source archive, destination and the data you need to move.
We begin by establishing the scope, volume, access, timescales and reporting requirements. Then we design and operate the migration architecture, monitor progress and handle exceptions. See how that delivery works.
Your team provides knowledge of the estate and keeps control of the decisions. We run the migration platform, without giving your engineers another system to install or patch.
At handover, we provide the agreed chain-of-custody and outcome reporting: a record of migration activity and how the work finished. Those requirements are defined during discovery.
If you’re planning to leave Arctera / EV.Cloud, bring the export question forward. Work out how your data will get out before committing to when the migration will be finished.
Tell us where the data is, where it needs to go and roughly how much there is. EV Cloud is one of the sources you can include when you ask for a quote.
The managed route from this cloud-hosted archive to Mimecast Cloud Archive is Arctera EV Cloud to Mimecast. Arctera EV Cloud is a different product from on-premises Enterprise Vault.