What's Google Takeout and why would I use it?
Google Takeout is a service provided by Google to allow for the exporting of data from Google services. Migrate now allows for you to use this as a source for your migrations. You can run a Takeout from Google Takeout and select a wide number of datapoints to export, however Migrate currently only supports mail and Drive item types.
Takeout does have some disadvantages, as it doesn't give you detailed metadata around files locations and sharing permissions for example, and as such we would not recommend using it as a source for all migration scenarios. However, one advantage of Takeout is it allows for vaulted data to be exported much faster than traditional methods, so if speed of accessing vault data is your priority over fidelity of metadata, then this is a good option.
How do I use Takeout within Migrate
In order to use Takeout as a source within Migrate you will need to follow the following steps;
- Start a Takeout from Google Takeout using an admin account with permissions to do so within your domain
- Once the Takeout has completed, you will have access to a GCP bucket created and provided by Google
- Google will automatically delete this bucket after a period of time (in the range of approximately 30 days), so it's recommended that you move the output of the takeout to a bucket you own and control
- Once the data is accessible, you can then point Migrate to the bucket that contains the takeout data
- All the takeout data should be stored within a single “folder” within the bucket, as this is the folder you can direct Migrate to
- Takeout can occasionally fail specific files/users and gives you the option to retry these failed items, producing a new bucket with the results. Its highly recommended that you treat each of these retry outputs as a separate “folder” in your bucket and migrate them in a separate configuration in Migrate rather than trying to combine them into a single run, as this will minimise the risk of duplicates
- Prerequisite - A service account needs to be created with the correct scopes for the data access and an associated P12 or JSON key. This account is entered in the configuration and the P12 or JSON key file is uploaded into CloudM Migrate. The whole process can be performed via a PowerShell script, as per https://support.cloudm.io/hc/en-us/articles/9116327040156-Google-Cloud-Storage-Configuration#prerequisites
- Log in to Migrate, and select the new Google Takeout option as a source for your project
- Populate the account details with the service account and p12/JSON key you have created. Detail the name of the bucket containing the Takeout data, and the top level folder within the “Takeout Prefix” field
- FIll out the details for your destination platform (see https://support.cloudm.io/hc/en-us/sections/9116322474908-Source-and-Destination-Configuration-Guides for information on these)
- Add your users via the items to migrate screen. It's recommended that you use the “Get items from source” option from the “Add items to migrate” dropdown, as this will scan your connected source bucket and automatically identify all the users.
- You can choose to Migrate the mail items and/or the files for each user here.
- From this point you can continue through the migration process, selecting your date ranges and starting the migration.
FAQs
What metadata will be included if I use Takeout as a source?
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For mail items the labels associated with each mail item will be supported and migrated, as well as key metadata such as date/time, to, from, cc.
For Drive items, the only data that will be included is the title of the file and the contents of the file itself - metadata like permissions will not be included.
Why are some of my files being migrated to an orphaned files folder rather than the original folder which wasn’t an orphaned folder?
- With the way the output files from Takeout are structured, Migrate is unable to identify the longest file path at the start of the migration. This can mean that during the migration, the file patch can become too long, and in this case Migrate will move the item to an orphaned items folder, rather than failing the item
What file types are supported?
- We only support the .mbox and any items included in the .zip file. Any items outside of these will note be exported or imported.