Three Tiers to Increase to Unlimited Storage in OneDrive for Business

In recent history, Microsoft quietly supported 1TB to 5TB.  Many customers didn’t notice that change.  Many Office 365 Admins don’t realize the limit is NOT 1TB.  This quiet update to the pricing plans with the reference to unlimited storage with the little circled i with more information has not really made it to general mindset of the community and many customers still support competing products not realizing that OneDrive as well supports UNLIMITED STORAGE for users!  A simple search for OneDrive Unlimited results in old information no recent discussions.

Why would you not want 25TB quotas for your users especially those who refuse to move because there isn’t enough cloud storage or they are worried about the cost?  OneDrive just got 25x more cool and beyond!

 

image

I put together the very sharable infographic above, so you can help promote the fact that OneDrive for Business is now Unlimited.  Feel free to use the image how every you’d like feel free to download it or use it in your slides.

Download the OneDrive Unlimited Storage Infographic.

It’s not hard to give all your users 5TB of storage by default.  Simply go to https://admin.onedrive.com/?v=StorageSettings and change the default 1TB to 5TB

 

image

Or through the Office 365 Admin Powershell:

To change default quota to 5TB  for OneDrive for Business for entire Tenant

Set-SPOTenant -OneDriveStorageQuota 5120

To change quota for a user:

Set-SPOSite -Identity <user’s OneDrive URL> -StorageQuota <quota>

Note Subscriptions with less than five users receive 1 TB of personal cloud storage per user.  In fact all start that way.

“Customers will initially be provisioned 1 TB of personal cloud storage per user in OneDrive for Business. You may increase the default OneDrive for Business storage space to up to 5 TB per user with the help of your Office 365 administrator once the 1TB quota is 90% full.”

Thats the tricky part.  Microsoft is basically saying wait until a user has reached that capacity, but getting to 5 TB default you don’t need to wait, but going to 25 TB quotas you’ll need MS support help with justification such as a user who is close.

“Whenever you need cloud storage beyond the initial 5 TB, open a case with Microsoft technical support to request it. Additional cloud storage will be granted as follows:

  • When a user has filled their 5 TB of OneDrive for Business storage to at least 90% capacity, Microsoft will increase your default storage space in OneDrive for Business to up to 25 TB per user (admins may set a lower per user limit if they wish to).
  • For any user that reaches at least 90% capacity of their 25 TB of OneDrive for Business storage, additional cloud storage will be provided as 25 TB SharePoint team sites to individual users. This additional storage is provided to the tenant by way of credit.

To see how much personal cloud storage you are using, your Office 365 administrator can go to the OneDrive Admin Center to manage their users’ personal cloud storage.”

See Change your users’ OneDrive storage space using PowerShell for more information on how Office 365 administrators can manage user storage in OneDrive for Business.

 

I had heard rumors that the 15GB per file limit was increased.  I have not seen this play out.  Uploading a file of 15.1 GB failed. I confirmed 15GB max individual file is still the case.  I’m hoping to see this increased for video files.  clip_image002

You can determine your personal quota by navigating to your onedrive for business and appending /_layouts/15/storman.aspx?root=Documents  It’s also in site settings… look for Storage Manager.  The nick name was StorMan

References:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/set-default-storage-space

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/change-user-storage

https://products.office.com/en-us/onedrive-for-business/compare-onedrive-for-business-plans

https://products.office.com/en-us/business/compare-more-office-365-for-business-plans

Joel Oleson1 Comment

Office 365 SharePoint, Teams, Groups 20x big storage quota increase is game changer!

I am very excited to see the new massive increase in base storage for the Office 365 tenant.  At an organization with 5000 people this means we go from a simple 3.5 TB tenant base storage to an impressive 51 TB.  This will not only instill confidence that we can store a lot more, but now departments that have a couple of TB of storage, we no longer need to divide up workloads.  It means a more simplified migration. 

Aaron Rimmer posted on Friday about the massive Office 365 storage increase to go in effect July 2018. 

“Today we are announcing a 20x increase in the SharePoint Online per user license storage allocation. This will increase to 1 TB plus 10 GB per user license purchased, up from 1 TB plus .5 GB per user license purchased. Note this does not include SharePoint Online kiosk plans including Office 365 F1 and Microsoft 365 F1.”

Those rolling out Teams, Groups, and Yammer can feel much better about their ability to scale.  I’ve heard people concerned over max tenant sizes.  This should help alleviate those concerns.  25TB site collections are now within reach without a lot of extra cost.  Teams moving large PSDs, images, drawings and raw video can now include more of the files and the experience is better with the hundreds of preview capabilities that Microsoft has been adding.

I’ve been thinking about what this would mean in an on premise SharePoint environment to 20x to go from 2TB to 40TB as an example.  That would be like going from a small database cluster to a large SAN environment.  This would be a huge deal.  Those who have been paying for the storage will appreciate this, but also those migrating content will be happy to see real PB environments becoming a reality overnight.

Personally I’m now thinking about those conversations of departments that were concerned about 2-3 TB file storage environments that may have been going to other solutions now seriously look at consolidating in a scalable environment that looks like it can support a much larger scale than previously thought.  When it was hitting the pocketbook at around 2.5TB to now have it be closer to 50TB is a big deal.  Thanks to those that made this happen.  Let’s keep it going in this direction.  We like it when what was a perceived limit is pushed up in a significant way.

image

Joel OlesonLeave a comment

SharePoint Outer Limits: SharePoint 2013 & Office 365 File Library List Limits

A Spooky Halloween Post for you…

Office 365 really has made some impact to how we look at setting limits to support larger files, more sites, larger videos, and more file types.   I felt it was important to revisit these classic file and folder restrictions. There appear to be so many random blog posts, KB articles, and TechNet articles, and MSDN articles. I decided I’d try to put the data all in one place.  Note this is subject to change, so be sure to verify anything you read here.

I highly recommend architects start planning for a minimum of 5GB My Sites and Sky Drive Pro.  We really need to start planning for 25GB SkyDrive Pro on-premises to compete with the improvements in the online services in order to compete with the online service.  If you’re going to do this… seriously consider external storage systems.  There are some great very cheap solutions.

Office 365 limits to SharePoint Online & SkyDrive Pro:

  • Single file upload: 2 GB and expanded support for a broader range of file types. (increased file upload limit from 250MB and is by default 50MB on-premises often increased by admins to 100 or 200MB)
  • # of total Site collections per tenant: 10,000 and list lookup threshold to 12 lookups. (was 3,000)
  • File retention: 90 day recycle bin retention duration with turning versioning on by default for new SkyDrive Pro libraries. (by default 30 days on-premises with versioning off)

Notes:

“We just significantly increased the default SkyDrive Pro storage per user, from 7 GB to 25 GB, with the ability to further increase to 50 GB or 100 GB. To complement this, we’re also increasing the per file upload limit, from 250 MB to 2 GB. Users will now be able to upload and share larger files like CAD drawings, video files, larger project documents and more-both to their personal SkyDrive Pro and to team site document libraries. And it is possible to upload more than one file at a time via drag and drop, the standard file upload dialog box or via SkyDrive Pro Sync for Windows.”

SharePoint Online Blocked File Types

Blocked Files Updated:

SharePoint Online now accepts a broader range of file types, specifically .exe and .dll. See the list below.

Blocked file types for SharePoint Online Note this is a much smaller list than on-premises listed at the bottom of this post.

FYI: The updated 10/31/2013 reduced list of blocked file types cannot be changed for a SharePoint Online site.

FILE EXTENSION FILE TYPE
.ashx ASP.NET Web handler file. Web handlers are software modules that handle raw HTTP requests received by ASP.NET.
.asmx ASP.NET Web Services source file
.asp Active Server Pages
.aspq Active Server Pages
.axd ASP.NET source file
.cshtm ASP.NET web page
.chtml ASP.NET web page
.json JavaScript Object Notation file
.rem Blackberry Encrypted Data file
.shtm HTML file that contains server-side directives
.shtml HTML file that contains server-side directives
.soap Simple Object Access Protocol file
.stm HTML file that contains server-side directives
.svc Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service file
.vbhtm ASP.NET Razor web page
.vbhtml ASP.NET Razor web page
.xamlx Visual Studio Workflow service file
FEATURE DESCRIPTION
Storage per user (contributes to total storage base of tenant) 500 megabytes (MB) per subscribed user.
Site collection quota limit Up to 100 GB per site collection.SharePoint admins can set storage limits for site collections and sites. The minimum storage allocation per site collection is 24MB.
Total available tenant storage 10 GB + 500 MB per user.For example, if you have 10 users, the base storage allocation is 15 GB (10 GB + 500 MB * 10 users).Up to a maximum of 100 GB. Additional storage for Small Business plans is not yet available.
Personal site storage 25 GB per user, as soon as provisioned.This amount is counted separately, and does not add to or subtract from the overall storage allocation for a tenant. Personal site storage applies to a user’s SkyDrive Pro library and personal newsfeed. For more information, see Additional information about SkyDrive Pro limits.
Public Website storage default 5 GBA SharePoint admin can allocate up to 100 GB (the limit for a site collection).
File upload limit 2 GB per file.
Number of users 1 – 25 users
Maximum number of external users invitees Up to 500 unique external users in the directory (external users who have accepted sharing invitations).What is an external user?

“When reviewing the information on the previous table, remember that the base storage limits for Office 365 for Small Business (10 GB + 500 MB per subscribed user) will affect some of these values. For example, although SharePoint Online for Small Business imposes a limit of 100 GB per site collection, your particular tenant might not have enough storage available to contain a site collection of 100 GB.”

Site, Folder and File Name Restrictions

KB Article 905231 I’ve added some additional symbols and recommendations.

  • Site Names
    • Not Allowed: | # { } % & <TAB>” ~ + / : * ? ” < >
    • Avoid starting sites with an underscore (_) or with the period character.
    • Site names can cause confusion and corruption if they have periods, apostrophes or commas
    • They should not have consecutive periods or end with a period.
      • You cannot use the period character at the end of a site name
    • Many other symbols are not recommended such as $^()-_=+[]`! (other international currency symbols and international symbols should be avoided in site names, but some are more acceptable in file names. Ascii is preferred when possible.
  • Folder Names and File Names
    • Do not use: ” # % & * : < > ? / { | } ~
    • File names cannot be longer than 128 characters
    • Do not use the period character consecutively in the middle of a file name.  For example, “file..name.docx” is invalid.
    • You cannot use the period character at the end of a file name
    • You cannot start a file name with the period character
    • Many other symbols are not recommended such as $^()-_=+[]`! (other international currency symbols and international symbols should be avoided in site names, but some are more acceptable in file names. Ascii is preferred when possible.
  • In addition, file names and folder names may not end with: (Many of these are international symbols)
    • .files, _files , -Dateien , _fichiers , _bestanden , _file ,_archivos ,-filer,_tiedostot ,_pliki ,_soubory ,_elemei , _arquivos ,_dosyalar ,_datoteke ,_fitxers,_fails ,_bylos ,_fajlovi,_fitxategiak

Examples of Legal File Names

  • AllItems.docx
  • Dept_1234.doc
  • Long.Name.With.Dots.txt

Examples of Illegal Site Names

  • Intranet/sites/People & Process
  • Intranet/sites/My Math is 10% Here
  • Intranet/sites/_foobar
  • Intranet/sites/#FAIL
  • Intranet/sites/Jimmy+Bean

Examples of illegal file names:

  • HailCæsar.wav.
  • Wow…BadStuff.txt
  • 揵.htm
  • Roger&Hamerstein.mp3
  • WhatsUp?.doc

Note that windows may let you save filenames that SharePoint won’t support uploading. Sometimes you’re even allowed to upload it through the explorer view, and it will block you from the web interface.  If a file that’s uploaded prior to the file extension being blocked you will be unable to download the file.

File and Folder name lengths

  • Link list items are restricted to 256 characters and will truncate links to SharePoint documents (or anything else) with lengths longer than this.
  • When storing files the structure and files (entire path including sites, folders, and file name) cannot add up to more than 260 characters or they will see an error message or form validation error with the explanation around the URL length.

When using multi file upload interface: Make sure the total size of all your files is not greater than the upload limit set for your web application.

NOTE: This is now different for SharePoint 2013/SharePoint Online.  Now you can drag and drop many files over the limit.  The interface may time out, and a page refresh should reflect what was upgraded.  A failure may or may not display depending on the interface timeout.

File Size Maximums

Max File Size Default: 50MB Maximum setting: 2GB (per file NOTE: 2GB is the new SkyDrive Pro limit)

List data: Max of 8kb of data

200 MB is what I recommend for most typical environments as a great compromise, but don’t recommend more than 500MB for most environments without External or Remote Blob storage.

(If you set it to 0 or 2047 MB, it will be the same as 2GB file.) Realistically a few hundred MB is really all you can get, unless you have fast LAN access. MS is now supporting 2GB.  Be sure to do some testing before setting this as the limit in your on-premises environment.

NOTE: I understand that even if you use RBS or Remote Blob Storage and most third parties, you still can’t support files over 2GB, but you’ll have to check with your vendor.

Note:

Each Web Application contains a list of blocked file types that is based on file name extensions. For example, you can block files that have the .exe extension. By default, many file types are blocked, including file types that are treated as executable by Internet Explorer. Files, whose names include braces, (for example, filename.{doc}) are also blocked by default.

Blocked File Types SharePoint 2013

Here are a few file types I typically remove from the blocked file list below: URL, LNK, CHM, HLP (if you want you can make the blocked list consistent with the online list)

I often add .MP3, PST, OST, and sometimes MP4. Some will add .ZIP, but I recommend allowing the .zip, arj, rar, etc… file as a common mechanism for compressing lots of files into a single file.

On-Premises SharePoint 2013 Blocked File Types

File name extension File type
.ade Microsoft Access project extension
.adp Microsoft Access project
.app Application file
.asa ASP declarations file
.ashx ASP.NET Web handler file. Web handlers are software modules that handle raw HTTP requests received by ASP.NET.
.asmx ASP.NET Web Services source file
.asp Active Server Pages
.bas Microsoft Visual Basic class module
.bat Batch file
.cdx Compound index
.cer Certificate file
.chm Compiled HTML Help file
.class Java class file
.cmd Windows NT command script
.com Microsoft MS-DOS program
.config Configuration file
.cpl Control Panel extension
.crt Security certificate
.csh Script file
.dll Windows dynamic-link library
.exe Program
.fxp Microsoft Visual FoxPro compiled program
.hlp Help file
.hta HTML program
.htr Script file
.htw HTML document
.ida Internet Information Services file
.idc Internet database connector file
.idq Internet data query file
.ins Internet Naming Service
.isp Internet Communication settings
.its Internet Document Set file
.jse JScript Encoded script file
.ksh Korn Shell script file
.lnk Shortcut
.mad Shortcut
.maf Shortcut
.mag Shortcut
.mam Shortcut
.maq Shortcut
.mar Shortcut
.mas Microsoft Access stored procedure
.mat Shortcut
.mau Shortcut
.mav Shortcut
.maw Shortcut
.mda Microsoft Access add-in program
.mdb Microsoft Access program
.mde Microsoft Access MDE database
.mdt Microsoft Access data file
.mdw Microsoft Access workgroup
.mdz Microsoft Access wizard program
.msc Microsoft Common Console document
.msh Microsoft Agent script helper
.msh1 Microsoft Agent script helper
.msh1xml Microsoft Agent script helper
.msh2 Microsoft Agent script helper
.msh2xml Microsoft Agent script helper
.mshxml Microsoft Agent script helper
.msi Windows Installer package
.msp Windows Installer update package file
.mst Visual Test source files
.ops Microsoft Office profile settings file
.pcd Photo CD image or Microsoft Visual Test compiled script
.pif Shortcut to MS-DOS program
.prf System file
.prg Program source file
.printer Printer file
.pst Microsoft Outlook personal folder file
.reg Registration entries
.rem ACT! database maintenance file
.scf Windows Explorer command file
.scr Screen saver
.sct Script file
.shb Windows shortcut
.shs Shell Scrap object
.shtm HTML file that contains server-side directives
.shtml HTML file that contains server-side directives
.soap Simple Object Access Protocol file
.stm HTML file that contains server-side directives
.url Uniform Resource Locator (Internet shortcut)
.vb Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition file
.vbe VBScript Encoded Script file
.vbs VBScript file
.ws Windows Script file
.wsc Windows Script Component
.wsf Windows Script file
.wsh Windows Script Host settings file

Joel Oleson18 Comments