Overview
"SharePoint Storage Sites" are unique SharePoint Online hosted sites specifically created to store employee maintained data. There are additional restrictions set on the sites to restrict sharing and permission management making it more secure than normal Microsoft SharePoint Online sites, including sites associated with Microsoft Teams.
- 25 TB total available storage (hard limit)
- Recommended less than 300,000 total files
- Recommended max permissions 5,000
Additional information on SharePoint Online limits is available here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/sharepoint-online-service-description/sharepoint-online-limits
What should a storage site be named?
- All SharePoint Storage Site names start with "Storage-" and are followed by a department or division name.
- For example: Storage-Engineering contains the majority of the Engineering folders.
- If a custom site is required, it is recommended to use a name like "Storage-DepartmentFunction" or "Storage-DepartmentProgram".
- An example for a CNR research program named "FireSev" may be "Storage-CNRFireSev", although it can also be "Storage-CNR-FireSev" if required.
- Additional information on Storage Site naming standards is available here: https://support.uidaho.edu/TDClient/40/Portal/KB/ArticleDet?ID=1660
Note: Spaces and special characters are not allowed in a site name. Only alphanumeric characters and the hyphen is allowed in the site name.
When should a new site be created?
- If the site restrictions listed above will be exceeded by a single group or project.
- Example: a research project requiring multiple TB of data that would affect others in their shared department Storage Site.
- There is a distinct separation of a group from their department or division.
- Example: some departments may be listed directly under the President's Office but are considered separate entities.
- There is a specialized security or sync restriction required.
- Data classification and sync restrictions are set per-site. If a department needs to restrict sync, or has other security considerations, it may require a separate site.
- There is a shared "High Risk" storage site which restricts syncing to "compliant" workstations. Compliant workstations must meet certain requirements like whole disk encryption, joined to Active Directory, etc.
Note: In general, creating a new Storage Site should be avoided when possible and a new folder should be created with the parent department or division.
These are a few warnings about using SharePoint Online for data storage:
- It is difficult to move content between sites and metadata may be lost during migration including file owner, creation time, versioning and recycle bin content.
- Holds and retention policy may differ between sites.
- The web interface limits moves to 100GB and will typically fail. The OneDrive Sync client may need to be used.
- Renaming a site is possible but discouraged as it will require group name changes and other manual steps.
- Copying content into the SharePoint Online infrastructure is easy, copy content out of SharePoint Online is *very* difficult and Microsoft throttles downloads.