Google Workspace Migrate best practices

Increase the success of your migration by following these recommended best practices for Google Workspace Migrate.

For detailed information, go to Google Workspace Migrate: Data migration best practices (PDF, English only).

Before you begin

• Use the latest version of the software—Google regularly updates the Google Workspace Migrate platform and node software and occasionally updates the database software. You should use the latest version of the software to ensure that you have the most recent Google Workspace Migrate features and fixes.

  For details, go to Upgrade the software.

• Adhere to the system requirements—Migrations require many resources. Meeting or exceeding the system requirements is crucial because new resources cannot be provisioned when a migration is in progress.

  For details, go to System requirements.

Set up your network

• Use Google Cloud—Google extensively tested Google Workspace Migrate in Google Cloud. We have the most experience supporting migrations in Google Cloud, including provisioning of the network and virtual machines (VMs) to the required specifications.
• Reduce network latency—To improve network performance, connect the servers on the same network and situate them in close physical proximity.

  If you use Google Compute Engine inside Google Cloud, you might want to choose a country/region or zone that is close to your point of service to decrease network latency. For example, choose the primary country/region or zone closest to your data sources.

• Set Chrome Browser as the default—Both Google Workspace Migrate and Google Cloud have been extensively tested on Chrome Browser.

  For details, go to Make Chrome your default browser.

• Turn off automatic Microsoft Windows updates—To prevent an unintended restart of your servers during a migration, manage Windows updates outside of active migrations.
• Set up the correct number of worker nodes—The number of worker node servers deployed should match the number of users in your organization and the amount of data to migrate. The size and complexity of your migration phases should match your organization's goals to ensure you have provisioned enough nodes to meet them.

  For details, go to Consider how many node servers you need.

• Limit worker nodes to 40 per cluster—For large migrations, the maximum number of worker nodes is 40. The 40 nodes combine to create a cluster. You can deploy multiple clusters for a migration. Clusters are self-contained and do not share databases, nodes, or platforms. Therefore, migration data sets on different clusters should be as mutually exclusive as possible.

  For details, go to Install the node servers.

• Set up the correct digital certificate—Google Workspace Migrate uses TLS certificates as its cryptographic protocol. TLS is used to set up the Google Workspace Migrate platform and node servers. Google does not currently support self-signed certificates.

  For details, go to Configure a port with a TLS certificate.

Plan your migration

• Scan your data—We recommend a full data scan before a migration. A full scan runs faster than a migration and it provides the following benefits:
  • Reports with an estimation of the corpus size, the type of source data, and any issues with the data.
  • Optimization of workload distribution across worker nodes.
  • Prioritization of large individual data sets that require serial processing (such as users with extensive numbers of email messages). In turn, large data sets do not become migration bottlenecks.
• Set up a new Google Workspace Migrate project when you're ready to migrate data—If you reuse a test project, Google Workspace Migrate recognizes that data has already been migrated during the test phase and doesn't migrate it again. After you complete testing, use a new project to avoid this issue.
• Don't map a single source user to multiple target users within the same project—Doing so can result in unexpected migration outcomes. If you must map a single user to multiple target users, use separate Google Workspace Migrate projects for each mapping.

Migrate data to Drive

When migrating files to Google Drive, we recommend that you:

• Familiarize yourself with the guidelines in Google Drive large migration best practices. 
• Split the migration into multiple target locations, for example, My Drives belonging to different users or separate shared drives.
• If possible, specify multiple Drive users in your mapping. It spreads the load of the migration across a larger group of users and helps avoid quota issues.
• Migrate to shared drives so that all team members can access your organization’s resources.

  For details, go to Best practices and tips for shared drives.

• Combine multiple user shares into Google Groups to easily manage shared drive membership and communicate announcements to a group.
• Eliminate folder hierarchies where possible.

There are some limits to the size and types of data you can store in Drive. For details, go to Files you can store in Google Drive.

Next step

Review the monitoring points for your data source: 

• Microsoft Exchange
• Microsoft SharePoint
• File shares
• Box
• Google Workspace