Scaling the Data Migration Mountain: A Survival Guide for Technical Architects & IT Admins

Ginni Saini and Ramanathan Krishnamurthy

Sooner or later, every organization decides it’s time to make the move. The data center’s getting crowded, costs are creeping up, and leadership wants the scalability and flexibility the cloud promises. Then the directive lands on your desk.

If you're an IT administrator or technical architect, chances are you've heard some version of it: "Move our data to the cloud."

Simple, right? Just drag and drop a few hundred terabytes and call it a day.

If only.

Every team learns the same lesson eventually: moving data is never just moving data. The reality of large-scale data migrations is far more complex, filled with challenges that can derail timelines, break budgets, and keep infrastructure teams up at night. It’s a chain reaction that tests your tools, timing, and patience in equal measure.

The migration mountain: Hazards you’ll encounter along the way 

Before you can plan a migration, you need a clear view of the path ahead. Moving data at scale touches every part of your infrastructure and exposes weak links you might not even know are there. Understanding the risks upfront is how you stay in control once the transfer starts.

Bandwidth bottlenecks

Your organization generates data faster than you can transfer it. That 500 TB dataset might look manageable on paper, but when you're pushing it through a 1Gbps connection shared with production workloads, you're looking at weeks or even months of transfer time. And that's assuming nothing goes wrong. Slow transfers delay progress and force teams to choose between speed, uptime, and accuracy.

The cost conundrum

Cloud providers love to advertise free ingress, but the real costs hide on the way out. Egress fees from your current provider can quickly add up, often at $0.05-0.09 per GB. That 500 TB migration could mean $25,000-$45,000 just to move your data out before you even start paying for your new storage. Unpredictable migration costs make it nearly impossible to plan budgets, project ROI, or justify the move to leadership.

Downtime = dollar signs

For many organizations, taking systems offline during a migration isn’t an option. Customers expect 24/7 access, no matter what’s happening behind the scenes. Hot migrations demand precise synchronization, careful planning, and tools that can keep live workloads moving without loss or corruption. Every hour of downtime costs real money and trust, two things that are far harder to win back than uptime.

Security checklist vs. security strategy

Data in transit is vulnerable, and transport layer security (TLS) encryption is just the starting point. For industries like healthcare, finance, and government, compliance doesn’t pause just because data is moving. A single misstep can expose sensitive data or trigger compliance investigations, turning an infrastructure project into a reputational crisis.

The "unknown unknowns"

The smallest details can cause the biggest disruptions. Settings like versioning, metadata, retention tiers, and access controls might seem routine, but one mismatch can throw everything off. Copying data over as-is can seem efficient until nothing behaves quite the way it should. Even a perfect transfer can fail in practice if configurations aren’t aligned, leaving teams with broken workflows and days of cleanup.

Growing data volumes and AI readiness

Data volumes are expanding faster than most migration plans can keep up. AI workloads in particular generate and consume massive datasets that need to move between environments constantly. Gartner forecasts that by 2029, "global demand for new storage capacity from generative AI will exceed 2 exabytes, up from less than 1 exabyte in 2024." That kind of growth can overwhelm networks, timelines, and budgets if migrations aren’t designed with scalability in mind.

Every migration is a combination of things you can plan for and those you can’t. The trick is building a process resilient enough to handle it all. Predictability comes from preparation, and preparation starts with the right tools.

Enter Wasabi: Three tools, three migration scenarios

With the risks defined, it’s time to move from planning to execution. Wasabi offers purpose-built tools for every migration scenario. Each one eliminates common barriers like egress fees, unreliable speeds, and bandwidth constraints, giving you predictable performance start to finish.

Cloud-to-cloud migrations

When your data already lives in another cloud, the challenge is migrating it selectively, securely, and without disrupting production. Wasabi Cloud Sync Manager automates hyperscaler or S3-compatible migrations end-to-end, orchestrating data movement between providers while maintaining visibility and control at every step.

It gives you granular filters so you can migrate only what you need (specific buckets, prefixes, or even individual objects) while optimized transfer protocols and parallel streams keep performance high and encryption in transit intact. Built-in retry logic, integrity verification, and comprehensive logging deliver enterprise-grade reliability, and transparent, usage-based pricing backed by an online cost and ROI calculator means you know what the migration will cost before you start.

Best For: Cloud-to-cloud migrations from AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or any S3-compatible provider.

Real-World Scenario: A SaaS provider managing 200 TB of customer data across multiple AWS S3 buckets might use Cloud Sync Manager to move production datasets first and archives later, reducing storage costs while maintaining uptime and confidence in the integrity of the migrated data.

Hybrid and continuous workloads

Some workloads never stop running, and not every migration can depend on available bandwidth. Wasabi Direct Connect provides a private, dedicated network link straight into our cloud storage backbone, giving organizations predictable, high-speed data movement and sustained hybrid operations.

Choose from 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps, or 100 Gbps connections to match your pace and budget. With a direct line, throughput stays consistent regardless of internet congestion, while traffic remains isolated from the public web for stronger security and regulatory compliance. The result is enterprise-grade stability for continuous workloads, seamless hybrid integrations, and performance you can plan around.

Best For: On-premises data centers or hybrid cloud environments requiring continuous, high-speed, and secure connectivity.

Real-World Scenario: A media production company generates 50-100 TB of video content monthly that needs to be archived in the cloud. They also need fast access for editors to pull assets back down. Wasabi Direct Connect provides the consistent, high-speed bidirectional pipeline they need, turning cloud storage into an extension of their on-premises infrastructure.

Remote or bulk data transfers

For locations where bandwidth can’t keep up or first-time transfers involve hundreds of terabytes, Wasabi Ball delivers a faster, more reliable way to start. It’s a secure, high-capacity transfer appliance that moves data to the cloud at LAN speed, bypassing the delays of network uploads.

Each Wasabi Ball supports up to 250 TB and features hardware-level encryption, integrated security, and shipment tracking for peace of mind. Load the device locally, ship it back, and your data appears in Wasabi storage days or even weeks faster than over a 1 Gbps connection. After the initial load, you can switch to Direct Connect or public-internet sync for incremental updates.

Best For: Initial bulk transfers, remote sites with limited bandwidth, or any environment where network transfer times are impractical.

Real-World Scenario: A life sciences research facility has accumulated 500 TB of sequencing data that needs to be migrated to cloud storage for analysis and long-term archival. Using public internet for this amount of data upload could take months. Instead, they use two Wasabi Balls to complete the initial transfer in days, then use Wasabi Direct Connect or public internet for ongoing transfers of new data.

The bottom line: Migration doesn’t have to be painful

Even the best migrations test your patience, your planning, and sometimes your internet connection. The difference between painful and predictable comes down to the tools and strategy you bring to the job. Wasabi can help you skip the usual roadblocks with no egress fees, no surprise line items, just straightforward performance and pricing you can plan around.

For product managers, that means timelines that stay on track and budgets that don’t balloon mid-project. For technical architects, it means building a process resilient enough to handle both the known hazards and the ones that only show up halfway through the climb.

You don’t have to go the way alone. Wasabi Academy offers practical guides and reference architectures to help you plan your route. When you’re ready to start the journey, our storage experts can help you chart the right course.

Every migration looks daunting from the bottom of the mountain, but the right foundation changes everything. With a clear plan and the right tools, projects finish on schedule, costs stay contained, and data lands exactly where it should: ready for whatever comes next.

Ready to plan your migration?

Our experts can help you build a strategy that fits your timeline and budget. Contact us:

Wasabi Cloud Sync Manager

Wasabi Direct Connect

Wasabi Ball