Service Integration - Migrating the MOVEit Transfer Filestore to Azure Blobs

These instructions show you how you can migrate your existing MOVEit Transfer file store to be served from the Microsoft Azure Storage Service.

Your file store is a mounted drive, volume, or cloud service available to MOVEit Transfer where encrypted files and packages can be saved and accessed. For more information, see the visual in the section titled System Requirements.

The option to move your existing files and packages to Microsoft Azure Blob Storage enables you to leverage a file store that is:

  • Redundant. Azure provides built-in redundancy.
  • Elastically scalable. You can choose service tiers from Azure, dynamically.
  • Geo-available. You can turn on services in different timezones to circumvent extreme Internet events or even regional outages.
Note: It is best practice to leverage Azure Blob storage if you are running a instance from Azure and if you are running the Azure Storage Service in the same Azure region (for lowest latency). For more information, consult the best practices topic in the MOVEit Transfer Administrator Guide.

Migrating to Azure Blobs from a Traditional Shared Filestore

The MOVEit Transfer Blob Storage Conversion utility migrates the root filestore of your MOVEit Transfer organizations (Files\{orgId}) to Azure Blobs Storage. Other, non-root filestore files are not moved.

Note: Non-root filestore files such as logs, certs, Web UI branding, and licenses remain local (or, in the case where MOVEit Transfer was deployed as a Web Farm, they remain on the UNC file share).

Welcome Screen of Migration Utility (the Blob Storage Conversion Assistant)

Before You Begin

You will need the following:

Requirement

Description

Azure Account

You will need sign-on credentials to your Azure account.

To create an Azure Account navigate to the Azure Management Portal and click Create one!

Azure Management Portal Sign-on Screen

Azure Blob Storage Service

You can create a Blob Storage service if you have one of the following:

  • Azure General Purpose Account
  • Azure Storage Account
Note: Recommended tier level is "Hot" for anticipated read write transaction volume.

Container Name

Storage service container name. (Essentially a Blob top-level folder name)

An API Key

An API key used when MOVEit Transfer connects to Azure Storage.

Note: Your API key is needed to connect to the Azure Storage Service. Take care when managing it. For more information, see the Azure Storage best practices topic in the MOVEit Transfer Guide.

Migration Tool

Get the MOVEit Transfer Azure Blob Migration Utility from the MOVEit Community Site. It is available from the My Products Page.

Tasks Needed to migrate your MOVEit Transfer filestore to Azure Blobs

  • Task 1: Shutdown Transfer (ideally)
  • Task 2: Run the Migration Wizard
  • Task 3: Verify

Task 1: Shutdown Services in Transfer (Except for the MOVEit Transfer Database Transaction Server)

Note: It is best practice to send out a notification email to MOVEit Transfer users before you perform maintenance operations such as filestore migration.

This task is needed to prevent users from modifying files in the active datastore before the migration completes.

Step

Description

1.

Remote desktop or sign-on to the host where the MOVEit Transfer Server is running.

2.

Open the Configure MOVEit Transfer Console.

3.

Click the Status tab and close services to prevent users from modifying the MOVEit Transfer filestore.

  • First, shutdown client services (Web, FTP, SSH, scheduler).
  • Next, shutdown all services except for Database.

Status tab of Configure MOVEit Transfer Console

Task 2: Download the MOVEit Transfer Utilities Bundle and Run the Migration

Step

Description

1.

Extract the files from the MOVEit Transfer Utilities .zip file.

2.

Launch the MOVEit Transfer-LocalFsToAzureBlobs application.

  • The Blob Conversion Assistant prompts you for your Azure Storage Service information.
  • Test your connection.

3.

Allow file migration the time it needs to complete.

Task 3: Verify

After you migration completes, you can verify that MOVEit Transfer is pointing at your Azure Storage Service by checking the Configure MOVEit Transfer Console.

Step

Description

1.

From the host where the MOVEit Transfer Server is running, open the Configure MOVEit Transfer Console.

2.

Click on the Filesystem tab.

MOVEit Transfer now points to Azure storage.