Migrate, Store, and Do More

Inventory your data first, then sequence the move by risk. Backups and cold archives go early, active workloads go last, and every phase gets verified before the next begins. From there, point backup and archive applications directly at your Wasabi bucket over the S3 API and retire legacy hardware on your schedule, not a forced one. Wasabi supports legacy migration based on the use case with a range of options. No matter the choice, it will be a flat, predictable price, meaning the plan you scope is the bill you get, with no egress or API fees changing the math mid-migration. 

At petabyte scale, bandwidth is often the bottleneck, so plan around this well in advance based on your network speed. Using Wasabi Direct Connect, you can leverage a dedicated connection for long-term access or a hosted connection if you are already partnering with one of our partners or want something for a shorter period. This allows for rapid seeding for the bulk of your archive without a major overhaul of your on-prem infrastructure. Because Wasabi charges no ingress, egress, or API fees, you can test, verify, and re-run transfers without the migration itself inflating your bill.

Other than transferring data over the internet, you have a few other options: ship data physically with the Wasabi Ball transfer appliance up to 250 TB at a time, or use Wasabi Direct Connect for a continuous, high-security connection from your data center to the cloud at speeds up to 100 Gbps. Wasabi's support team and migration partners can assist in recommending the right fit for your team based on data size, use case, and bandwidth.

Lock-in usually hides in two places: 1. proprietary formats and 2. egress fees that make leaving expensive. Choose a provider built on the industry-standard S3 API, like Wasabi, so your data stays portable across thousands of compatible applications, and confirm there are no egress or API charges before you sign. With Wasabi, moving your data out costs nothing, which means you stay because the price predictability works, never because the exit is punishing.

Start with the data nobody touches, but everybody keeps. Backups, compliance archives, surveillance retention, and completed project files, which typically make up the majority of on-prem capacity while carrying the lowest migration risk. Moving cold data to Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage first frees expensive local storage immediately and proves out your cloud workflow before any active workload depends on it. Active files, databases, and anything with heavy daily access should move last, once your archive tier is verified and running.

The math comes down to volume versus bandwidth. A petabyte takes roughly three months to move over a dedicated 1 Gbps line, so if your dataset outruns your connection, ship the bulk with the Wasabi Ball transfer appliance and sync the incremental changes over the network. Smaller migrations, generally under 100 TB with decent bandwidth, usually finish faster over the wire using the internet. Most large migrations combine both, and since Wasabi charges no ingress fees, neither path adds transfer costs to your bill.

Hyperscaler bills balloon because of what surrounds the storage– egress fees, API request charges, retrieval penalties, and tiering complexity that punishes you for touching your own data. Wasabi charges a single, predictable price per terabyte, drastically reducing budget surprises. Your bill tracks how much you store, never how often you use it.