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Message
Sharepoint/OneDrive Migration - am I approaching this correctly?
Posted on 3/18/25 at 3:04 pm
Posted on 3/18/25 at 3:04 pm
I work for a small CyberSecurity company as a network and security engineer.
I'm really focused on PAN firewalls, endpoint, etc. for my actual job, but I also do inhouse IT for our company as a "perk."
I'm when it comes to running IT, i'm a jack of all trades, master of none. I know my basics on AD, Servers, O365, Salesforce, network, backup, etc.
my company is fairly stuck in some mid-2000s technology. we all went home for covid and still maintain an office with a data closet i'm in charge of.
Everybody VPNs into a central server for documentation of POs, marketing materials, etc. I live 2 hours away and don't mind coming in when there's issues, but I've reached my limit of troubleshooting "my VPN isn't working." power blips, internet outages , etc.
We are currently an office 365 shop, with that comes a TB of Sharepoint storage. We really only use about 3-500 gigs of actual storage and I don't think we'd ever touch the TB.
Seeing as how sysadmin stuff isn't my day to day, I'm aware of one drive, Teams, and sharepoint, but i moved over to being purely a networking guy when these were making their rises so I never really got fully vested into training on them.
What I'd like to do is keep our on prem server up and running and still allow VPN if needed, but make it to where our users have the ability to get to and place/retrieve files as needed that sync with the on-prem. That way if somebody yells about internet down or vpn issues, i can just say "use sharepoint." Our office area is under construction and i'd say about a dozen times a year there's an internet or power outage (yes i have UPSs) but it happens enough that i get irritated with people not just saving their files locally till the outage is over or i get down there.
i've been up and down reddit boards trying to determine if my usecase makes sense. I don't want to replace the server yet as that would give some conniptions to a few people being entirely in the cloud even though that's the way of the world now.
What most people say about migration is to where they are doing away with their server entirely and solely hosting things in sharepoint/one drive. I'm not opposed to that, but don't think that would fly for my company.
Where I can't really get an answer is which way the sync would work. In theory, I'd like the primary server to be the master and if we have an outage, they can retrieve files or place files in sharepoint and then that would sync to the server. If that's not doable, at a minimum, if it could just have a sync where they could retrieve files if needed and then hold off on writing to the server when it's available that would be fine.
i can't tell if people are saying that once you move to sharepoint that you need to solely access your data or it will do a continued sync.
any and all help appreciated.
I'm really focused on PAN firewalls, endpoint, etc. for my actual job, but I also do inhouse IT for our company as a "perk."
I'm when it comes to running IT, i'm a jack of all trades, master of none. I know my basics on AD, Servers, O365, Salesforce, network, backup, etc.
my company is fairly stuck in some mid-2000s technology. we all went home for covid and still maintain an office with a data closet i'm in charge of.
Everybody VPNs into a central server for documentation of POs, marketing materials, etc. I live 2 hours away and don't mind coming in when there's issues, but I've reached my limit of troubleshooting "my VPN isn't working." power blips, internet outages , etc.
We are currently an office 365 shop, with that comes a TB of Sharepoint storage. We really only use about 3-500 gigs of actual storage and I don't think we'd ever touch the TB.
Seeing as how sysadmin stuff isn't my day to day, I'm aware of one drive, Teams, and sharepoint, but i moved over to being purely a networking guy when these were making their rises so I never really got fully vested into training on them.
What I'd like to do is keep our on prem server up and running and still allow VPN if needed, but make it to where our users have the ability to get to and place/retrieve files as needed that sync with the on-prem. That way if somebody yells about internet down or vpn issues, i can just say "use sharepoint." Our office area is under construction and i'd say about a dozen times a year there's an internet or power outage (yes i have UPSs) but it happens enough that i get irritated with people not just saving their files locally till the outage is over or i get down there.
i've been up and down reddit boards trying to determine if my usecase makes sense. I don't want to replace the server yet as that would give some conniptions to a few people being entirely in the cloud even though that's the way of the world now.
What most people say about migration is to where they are doing away with their server entirely and solely hosting things in sharepoint/one drive. I'm not opposed to that, but don't think that would fly for my company.
Where I can't really get an answer is which way the sync would work. In theory, I'd like the primary server to be the master and if we have an outage, they can retrieve files or place files in sharepoint and then that would sync to the server. If that's not doable, at a minimum, if it could just have a sync where they could retrieve files if needed and then hold off on writing to the server when it's available that would be fine.
i can't tell if people are saying that once you move to sharepoint that you need to solely access your data or it will do a continued sync.
any and all help appreciated.
2
Posted on 3/18/25 at 3:15 pm to 3nOut
when you go sharepoint it is easier to just move everything solely to sharepoint. You will be paying for the service so might as well use it. I dont see you gaining anything by keeping local server active. I have dealt with that setup and it is horrible as some people will cling to that old server because it is what they know. Just shut it off and force sharepoint would make everyone's life much easier (and reliable) and no need for VPNs anymore.
Posted on 3/18/25 at 3:29 pm to notsince98
quote:
it is horrible as some people will cling to that old server because it is what they know.
this is my issue. i'm honestly even scared to bring it up to some people.
quote:
I dont see you gaining anything by keeping local server active.
which brings me to that. i have no desire to. i'd love to just move everything to Azure/Sharepoint (as much as I don't have a high level understanding of everything that entails.) i just think some people would lose their mind if i said we're going all cloud. they'd adjust and move to it eventually, but i'd like to baby step if possible.
for a frame of reference, my boss has a laptop. that laptop stays at the office unless he's traveling. when he's working from home, he uses the primary profile on his windows desktop. his wife handles some financials. because he doesn't want her to have to switch back and forth between profiles, they just use always on VPN and she remotes into a jump server on our network to get to the shares on the server. they bicker over using the computer and profiles so she is used to having her own desktop and they maintain a vm just so she can log in.
a goofy anecdote, but just the old schoolness of some behaviors in the company.
This post was edited on 3/18/25 at 3:40 pm
Posted on 3/18/25 at 3:41 pm to 3nOut
Good luck. Sharepoint/onedrive is great when you get there. Being able to have multiple people editing one word or excel file at the same time is worth it on its own. The extra perks of automatic archiving file changes is icing on the cake. It is great to be able to right click on any file and see all file change history and who did it. Yon can pull down any archived version of a file whenever you want. No more concerns about losing data if someone does something stupid.
And of course WFH on sharepoint is lightyears faster.
And of course WFH on sharepoint is lightyears faster.
Posted on 3/18/25 at 3:47 pm to notsince98
quote:
Being able to have multiple people editing one word or excel file at the same time is worth it on its own.
we have a single document that we have some action items from. it has been an act of congress to convince people that we can host this document in Teams/Sharepoint and not have to email everybody the revisions. the CEO/boss wants an xlsx emailed everytime we have an update on it.
i put a quick stop to that nonsense.
Posted on 3/18/25 at 4:04 pm to 3nOut
That was way TLDR.
Here's what Grok said about it. Link
Here's what Grok said about it. Link
quote:
Recommendation
Given your constraints and irritation with VPN issues, Option 2 (SharePoint as master) is technically cleaner and aligns with Microsoft’s ecosystem. However, since you want the on-prem server to stay primary for now, Option 1 is your best bet. Here’s a practical starting point:
1. Set up a test SharePoint library with a small subset of files.
2. Sync it to a test folder on the server using OneDrive.
3. Use a simple RoboCopy script (e.g., robocopy \\server\files C:\SharePointSync /MIR) to mirror changes from the original share to the synced folder every few minutes.
4. Test outage scenarios—pull the server offline, edit files in SharePoint, and see how they sync back.
If it works, roll it out fully. You can say “use SharePoint” during outages, and the server stays the daily driver.
Final Thoughts
You’re not crazy—your use case makes sense for a hybrid stopgap. The Reddit chatter about full migration reflects the ideal endgame, but you can absolutely sync on-prem and SharePoint for resilience without ditching the server. Just expect some quirks (e.g., conflicts, permissions). Long-term, nudging folks toward SharePoint as the primary source will save you headaches, but for now, this hybrid setup should keep everyone happy—or at least quieter.
This post was edited on 3/18/25 at 4:06 pm
Posted on 3/18/25 at 7:22 pm to 3nOut
quote:
Our office area is under construction and i'd say about a dozen times a year there's an internet or power outage (yes i have UPSs) but it happens enough
This dictates that the office server just becomes a backup of your Sharepoint infrastructure. Going down that often is no bueno. I would start by suggesting that the in house server needs to be moved to a colo (this expensive setup is intentional) for reliability. Get cost estimates and communicate those. Mgmt won't like it, but with the outages, you can make the case. And then you hit them with the uppercut of, "but there is a much cheaper way." You have just given management enough information for them to decide that everyone is going to use Sharepoint going forward.
User education is going to be critical here. An ELI5 guide of "if it's document type A, B, C, save to Sharepoint." "If it's X,Y, or Z, save it to OneDrive, etc." Then, stick an SLA on "VPN issues" that makes people not want to deal with their access to the file server/VPN being inoperable, so they want to move to Sharepoint. And I pray you're charging your mileage (if you haven't noticed, it's not deductible anymore.)
Posted on 3/18/25 at 9:44 pm to LemmyLives
quote:
And I pray you're charging your mileage (if you haven't noticed, it's not deductible anymore.)
I have a company SUV so it’s not an issue.
Appreciate the responses. I’ll continue research and reply when I get a final solution.
Posted on 4/23/25 at 8:19 am to 3nOut
just a bump on this. I finally got my last person to sync our sharepoint drive to their OneDrive.
Officially have it to where they can access the file share on teams (PC or phone,) outlook mobile, OneDrive (pc or phone,) and on the sharepoint site.
In the meanwhile, I've had to keep syncing changes that people are making to the server over to one drive just so it stays up to date in case of an emergency, but I'm planning on a hard June 1 cutoff to the server.
appreciate the responses.
Officially have it to where they can access the file share on teams (PC or phone,) outlook mobile, OneDrive (pc or phone,) and on the sharepoint site.
In the meanwhile, I've had to keep syncing changes that people are making to the server over to one drive just so it stays up to date in case of an emergency, but I'm planning on a hard June 1 cutoff to the server.
appreciate the responses.
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