OneDrive Migration
Retire your file server. Move users' home directories and Windows Known Folders to OneDrive. Remote access without VPN. Your data follows the user, not the location.
Your File Server Is the Reason Remote Work Does Not Work
Home drives on an on-prem file share. Department shares mapped as network drives. VPN every time somebody works from home. Backups running overnight, restores taking hours, and nobody is sure which folders are still actively used. When the file server hardware comes up for renewal, the question is always the same: another three years of the same problem, or a clean move to the cloud.
This is not a failure of your IT team. Known Folder Move to OneDrive is not plug-and-play — you need to handle long-path issues, unsupported characters, sync app rollout rate limits, permissions structures that do not map cleanly, and users who treat file moves as an act of aggression. Without a structured migration, the pilot stalls, the file server stays on, and nothing changes.
Traditional consulting for a file-to-cloud migration? Six figures. The consultant migrates, leaves a handover, leaves. When users complain six months later about sync errors, you are back on your own.
ACTIVITIES IN DETAIL
DELIVERABLES
Inventory file-server data: total volume, file count, long paths, unsupported characters, stale data, permission complexity
Pre-provision OneDrive accounts for all in-scope users so they have a target before migration starts
Pilot with 20–30 users across departments — validate sync, KFM behavior, permission preservation
Migrate home directories with the SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) into each user's existing OneDrive Documents folder
Configure Known Folder Move policy via Intune Administrative Templates (or GPO for hybrid): Desktop, Documents, Pictures — silently redirected to OneDrive
Tune sync app: upload bandwidth throttling during initial KFM wave, Files On-Demand enabled, block personal OneDrive sign-in
Handle edge cases: users with very large drives, shared team folders (route to SharePoint/Teams), legacy applications with hardcoded UNC paths
Staged wave rollout by department — pilot → early adopters → general population → cleanup stragglers
Decommission plan for the file server: mark-as-read-only date, final delta sync, retention copy, power-off date
End-user training: OneDrive cloud concepts, sync icons, sharing permissions, recycle-bin recovery
Helpdesk runbook: sync errors, restore from OneDrive version history, re-permission a share
Next steps after OneDrive Migration
A cleanly configured tenant is the foundation. These blueprints build directly on it
