Major Increases to Available Storage for Office 365 SharePoint and OneDrive Users

Microsoft has announced several changes to the storage available to end-users for those subscribers to premium Office 365 plans including:

Office 365 Enterprise E3, E4 and E5
Office 365 G

  • Office 365 Enterprise E3, E4 and E5
  • Office 365 Government E3, E4 and E5
  • Office 365 Education
  • OneDrive for Business Plan 2 and SharePoint Online Plan 2

The changes include increases to storage within OneDrive for Business and pooled storage available within SharePoint Online.

OneDrive for Business Storage: From 1 TB to 5 TB to Unlimited

The current 1 TB limit for One Drive for Business is increasing to 5 TB as of March 2016. Microsoft is committing to increase the limit to unlimited in the near future.

More SharePoint Online Space: From 10 GB to 1 TB

The current model for allocating space to SharePoint Online starts with a pool of 10 GB + 0.5 GB for each user. This space is then allocated to site collections. If organizations need more than their pool, they can purchase additional storage.

Customers on the premium plans above will now have 1 TB + 0.5 GB, a major upgrade from the 10 GB previously provided.

New Storage Usage Model for SharePoint Online Site Collections

In the current model, organizations provision site collections and allocate storage to them. This allocation is reserved for that site collection and is now unavailable for any other site collection. In the new model, only the storage that is used is now reserved and all other storage is still available to the shared pool for the tenant.

How the new usage model applies to team sites and OneDrive for Business

There is also a new configuration setting to allow admins to have specific storage quotas on each site collection (manual) or simply have storage automatically increase as it is used (auto).

Site Collection Storage Management toggle switch to select Auto or Manual highlighted

Increase in Site Collection Limit: From 10K to 500K

Microsoft has also increased the limit for site collections from a maximum of 10,000 site collections to 500,000 site collections.

Christopher Woodill

About ME

Enterprise technology leader for the past 15+ years…certified PMP, Six Sigma Black Belt and TOGAF Enterprise Architect. I collaborate with companies to help align their strategic objectives with concrete implementable technology strategies. I am Vice President, Enterprise Solutions for Klick Health.

Leave a Comment