Troubleshooting Common Issues in Metalogix SharePoint Site Migration Manager
Migrating SharePoint sites with Metalogix SharePoint Site Migration Manager can streamline moves, but issues still occur. This guide helps you quickly diagnose and resolve the most common problems so migrations finish successfully and with minimal downtime.
1. Pre-migration checks (quick wins)
- Permissions: Ensure the account used has Farm/tenant admin rights on source and destination and full database access where applicable.
- Service accounts & credentials: Verify stored credentials are current and not expired.
- Network & firewall: Confirm ports between source, target, and the migration server are open and latency is acceptable.
- Disk space: Check available disk space on migration server and target file locations for staging or temporary files.
- Version compatibility: Confirm Metalogix version supports your source and target SharePoint versions and CU/patch level.
2. Authentication failures
- Symptoms: “Access denied,” ⁄403 errors, or repeated credential prompts.
- Fixes:
- Re-enter credentials in the Migration Manager credential store and test connection.
- If using ADFS/claims or OAuth, ensure migration service supports the authentication method and that app registrations/trusts are valid.
- Check time sync (NTP): skewed clocks can break token-based auth.
- For on-premises, confirm the account isn’t locked/disabled and password hasn’t expired.
3. Connection or discovery errors
- Symptoms: Unable to discover sites, lists, or libraries; connection timeouts.
- Fixes:
- Test connectivity with browser and PowerShell from the migration server to the SharePoint endpoints.
- Increase discovery timeout in settings if large environments cause timeouts.
- Temporarily disable proxies or deep packet inspection devices that may interfere.
- Review ULS and migration logs for endpoint-specific errors.
4. Throttling and performance issues
- Symptoms: Slow throughput, throttling-related errors from SharePoint Online, or long-running jobs.
- Fixes:
- For SharePoint Online, implement exponential backoff and respect Microsoft’s throttling guidance—use scheduled windows and smaller concurrency.
- Split large migrations into smaller batches (site by site, or by content size).
- Tune Migration Manager concurrency and worker counts; monitor CPU, memory, and network utilization on migration machines.
- Use incremental migration passes to reduce load and catch changes after a bulk pass.
5. Missing or corrupted content after migration
- Symptoms: Files or list items absent, broken links, or corrupted file content.
- Fixes:
- Verify that the source content wasn’t already corrupted; preview files before migration.
- Check file path length and illegal characters—apply renaming rules or mappings before migration.
- Ensure binary files transfer in correct mode (BLOB handling) and that any antivirus or file-level filters aren’t altering files during transfer.
- Re-run a delta/incremental pass and compare item counts and checksums where possible.