M365 Archive options

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alexsmith2709

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I have a client that has been using dropbox to host pretty much all their company data, last year they moved over to M365 for email and they've been starting to use onedrive and sharepoint to are gradually moving all files from dropbox to onedrive/sharepoint. I dont know exactly how the storage is divided up by user, but at least one user definitely has more than 1TB data, and the total storage used in dropbox is around 5TB.
I know you can archive mail and get the extra 100GB storage for that (for the premium licenses at least), but what would you guys say the best option for storage archived files was which will allow them to save money (compared to the cost of all that dropbox space) and hopefully keep it within the M365 ecosystem. Buying extra storage doesnt look that cheap. They have a mix of Business Basic and Business Premium subscriptions.
I've never had a client with this much data before so i dont know the best option to suggest, most stick within the 1TB per user/site.
 
Hard to say without seeing how the data is divvied up.
Assuming they're on Dropbox Teams...with basic plan, they're paying 15/user/month for that. How many users do they have?
With 365, you start with 1TB for Sharepoint, and get 10 gigs per user on top of that. This isn't counting the users mailbox, or OneDrive. So...gotta look at how users have their data in Dropbox now....their personal (which would be OneDrive)..and then what they do they need in the middle for shared....in Teams (Sharepoint). does all 5 TB need to go there? Or..after moving personal to each users OneDrive...do they just need say, 2 or 3TB in Teams/Sharepoint?

Additional SP storage is just 20 cents per gig per month.
 
So email data is different than data you'd store in OneDrive/SP/Teams. Exchange Plan 1 can hold 50 gigs of email, Plan 2 allows 100 gigs, then you can setup in-place archiving for either and get more email up to the cloud.

Data in OD/SP/Teams is based upon the plan you have. Microsoft does not backup your data, so you can buy a 3rd party backup for that and the email. Highly recommend doing the backup.
 
Thanks for the replies.
From what i understand the owner of the business has some .pst archives from before them moving to M365, these pst files are from many different users. He is saying his account alone is 4.2TB but that could be split up.
As i suspected im going to have to dig deeper to find out exactly how we can split this up.
@callthatgirl do you have any recommendations for any 3rd party backup provider so i could suggest this as well.
 
Oh...well, PST is just email....so, if the user is on Microsoft 365 Business Premium (which is the minimal license I offer to our clients)....you have unlimited online archive...stick it there! No need to worry about extra space.

We use DropBox for 3rd party backup of our 365 clients.

Also, set retention policies to "never delete" in 365...save you some headaches there.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Oh...well, PST is just email....so, if the user is on Microsoft 365 Business Premium (which is the minimal license I offer to our clients)....you have unlimited online archive...stick it there! No need to worry about extra space.

We use DropBox for 3rd party backup of our 365 clients.

Also, set retention policies to "never delete" in 365...save you some headaches there.
Click to expand...
I've now been told the PSTs total just shy of 1TB but no idea how many or what the max size is but the unlimited archive sounds like a good start, i thought it was 100GB archive space you got? If its unlimited for Premium then great, that may be an easy sell to upgrade the remaining basic accounts they have. Many users already had Office licenses so went with Business Basic for those but gradually people are being moved on to Premium as new staff join or the version of Office gets too old (I think some are still using 2013).
 
I'm still in the habit of using "unlimited" for archiving on the Biz Prem plans...but to be accurate, Microsoft did scale back the original "unlimited" and there is a 1.5TB limit. But based on above you're still fine there.

I go with Biz Prem because...
*You get AzureAD...joining computers to azure active directory for optimal management and policies
*Defender plan 1 (previously advanced threat protection)..greatly increased spam/malware/phishing protection. This alone is so well worth it.
 
I tried initially with all the better spam and malware protection along with being able to manage company devices, policies remote wiping etc but money won that round of discussions, but they are slowly coming around to the idea when things/people get replaced
 
@YeOldeStonecat and the only way to get past 100gb is to enable automatically expanding archival. And hope you never have it expand too quickly.

@alexsmith2709 There really isn't much for it but to put the subs you need to make things fit. Then when the dust settles you have to figure out how to backup the tenant itself. You can do that both within and without the Microsoft umbrella. I prefer the latter, Synology works really well. But you'd need a larger unit for all that.
 
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Do they REALLY need to keep the old mail? E-mail hoarding ought to be classified as a mental illness. It is rarely justified by any real business or compliance need(at least not to the degree most users do so).
 
nlinecomputers said:
Do they REALLY need to keep the old mail? E-mail hoarding ought to be classified as a mental illness. It is rarely justified by any real business or compliance need(at least not to the degree most users do so).
Click to expand...
Probably not, but thats not my place. I mentioned it when i did their migration as one mailbox without any additional archive files was 30GB.

They have started changing previous employees to shared accounts now instead of archiving the complete mailbox in case anyone needs it. At least that gives them 50GB mail storage

I think whatever option they/I go with it'll be cheaper than their current dropbox bill!
 
nlinecomputers said:
Do they REALLY need to keep the old mail? E-mail hoarding ought to be classified as a mental illness. It is rarely justified by any real business or compliance need(at least not to the degree most users do so).
Click to expand...
People that deal in mortgages have to hold everything for 5 years. That gets... bonkers...

But yeah, it's really a business owner thing. And I'm OK with all of it. I explain what the limits of each subscription are, and let them make the call. If they pay for it, they can keep it. If they don't? Well... start deleting stuff.
 
nlinecomputers said:
E-mail hoarding ought to be classified as a mental illness. It is rarely justified by any real business or compliance need(at least not to the degree most users do so).
Click to expand...

Amen!

And it appears we all agree that it's certainly our place to suggest, strongly, that "keep all messages, forever," is not a good thing to do.

Email and old-fashioned mail should be handled similarly. What you can "touch, act, and dispose of," you should. Only stuff that is necessary for recordkeeping should be kept, and that's a select few messages in the overall volume of email.
 
@alexsmith2709 I use Cloudally with my vendor, they sell and manage it all. I know Datto has a product too, Backupify, I tested it and liked it but I don't manage accounts.

I'm working on a 1TB upload right now for a client, all email. The online archive did not work for him, so we are creating 17 new mailboxes, only downloading 1 year to Outlook and the rest are in the cloud. Search works like a charm!
 
callthatgirl said:
@britechguy why is it not a good thing to do? Every client I have keeps all their email forever it seems. It's their data, why do I care?
Click to expand...
Because
1. Expense
2. Large email stacks are hard to manage. Indexing,searching, etc.
3. Security risks. Old email can have user and client PII data that they really shouldn’t be holding.
4. It’s never actually accessed so it is really not needed. So it’s virtual e-waste. See #1
 
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