File Server Migrations: The Pain Is in the Permissions

Moving all of a file server’s files to a new server with permissions intact – whether to consolidate several file servers into one, or because you need to move files to a virtualized file server – is a pretty awful process. You can’t drag and drop files from one server to another with Windows Explorer; it would take far too long for everything to copy. And while it seems like you should be able to simply back up the files from the old server and restore them to the new server, that approach often doesn’t work, either. This paper explains why, and then explores how to find the right tools for the job to ensure migrated date retains the same file securities, permissions, shared folder rules and local group configurations as before.