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Clean Data Migration Checklist

Data types to look out for before you move to the cloud and what to do about them.

Not all the data you own should move to the cloud in your migration. Moving more data than necessary could wind up increasing your total costs of operation (TOC), slowing down your migration, or exposing sensitive data that should not be in the cloud. You need to create a clean data set.

This checklist will provide you with some of the target data types that can be sanitized from your data set so you can create a clean copy for migration—and show you how Cloud Data Sense can help.

Target #1: Duplicate Data

  • Duplicate data may not be necessary to move to the cloud.
  • Migrating this data will increase the total amount of time/cost for the migration.
  • Over time, storing duplicate data in the cloud will be a financial burden.

Action Items: 

  • Discover the duplicate data in the data you intend to move to the cloud
  • Analyze whether or not there is a reason to migrate more than a single copy of this data.
  • Remove any unnecessary duplicate data from your migration data set.

Solution: Cloud Data Sense can pinpoint duplicate data and show you its usage patterns so you can remove it before your migration takes place.

Target #2: Non-Business Data

  • A large portion of your data set will not be related to your operations.
  • Blanket migrations will increase the length of the migration process.
  • This may include sensitive data that you should not store in the cloud.

Action Items:

  • Analyze your data set to identify mission-critical data from non-business data.
  • Remove the non-business data from the target data to migrate.
  • Determine if this data has a reason to be migrated to the cloud.
  • Identify any non-business data that contains sensitive personal information that should not be migrated.

Solution: Data Sense can analyze all your data, identifying the non-critical data that doesn’t need to be in the cloud and its sensitivity for privacy concerns.

Target # 3: Sensitive Data

  • Sensitive data requires a higher level of care than other data.
  • GDPR, CCPA, and other data regulations have restrictions on where data can be stored.
  • Certain industries have requirements to keep certain data stored on-prem.

Action Items:

  • Locate all of the sensitive data in your data migration.
  • Analyze the value of migrating the sensitive and potentially sensitive data to the cloud.
  • Tag all the potentially sensitive data that you don’t want to migrate.

Solution: Data Sense is able to map, identify, and flag potentially sensitive data that you have in your storage systems. The report will also show the data with open permissions that will require immediate attention.

Target # 4: Stale Data

  • Stale data is more than just infrequently used data, it just isn’t relevant anymore.
  • Moving this data to the cloud will waste time and increase your cloud costs.
  • Stale data can also contain sensitive information that should not be migrated.

Action Items:

  • Locate and tag all the stale data in your migration data set.
  • Determine the business value of this data.
  • Decide whether to keep this data for archival purposes or to delete it.

Solution: Data Sense scans can identify the stale data in your systems before you make the mistake of moving it to the cloud.

Target # 5: Custom Data

  • You might have specific data that your organization wants to keep out of the cloud.
  • This data should be located and separated from the migration data set.
  • There may be multiple custom types of data that fall into this category.

Action Items:

  • Consider whether there are any specific data types that should not migrate.
  • Identify where this data exists in your data set.
  • Remove the custom data from the migration data set.

Solution: Data Sense allows you to add custom data types that can be identified so the data can be sectioned off before the migration takes place.

Next Steps to Clean Migration

Once you tick all the boxes in this checklist, the next step is to carry out the sanitation process. To find out how to do that, download our guidebook on how to carry out a clean migration.

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Senior Marketing and Strategy Manager