Where should I store my data in Microsoft 365

People often ask "where should we put our data when we move to the cloud" and often get it wrong by either putting everything in one big pot or by putting data in the wrong locations for sharing and collaboration.  Here are some simple steps and best practices from Microsoft.

First figure out where your data is stored

What we mean by this is not "is my data in OneDrive, SharePoint or Teams", what we mean is where is your data stored as in which country.  The thing with Microsoft 365 is that it is a global product, operating from data centres all over the world, with there always being a primary, secondary and tertiary copy of the data.  It will be stored in three data centres, which is controllable by the settings in Microsoft 365 and it is important to know which locations the settings say it will use because there are regulations from the ICO (Information Commissioners Office) regarding GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) that states where data is allowed to be stored.  If you are storing it in a country that is not recognised as safe and secure by the ICO you could be in breech of data protection regulation, so it is important that you know where you data is located.

Second figure out your storage allowance for the tenant

When you buy a Microsoft 365 license, you are allocated a block of storage in Microsoft 365.  Here is the storage formula:

• Base storage - 1TB - the Tenant is granted 1TB of storage
• Additional storage - 10GB per qualifying license
• Maximum storage per site collection - 25TB

What does this mean?  It means that if you have 25 users that each has a Business Standard MS365 license your tenant will have

1TB + (25 x 10GB) = 1.25TB of SharePoint storage

On top of this, each user also has 1TB of OneDrive storage.  When calculating the storage you should have, remember that the key words are "qualifying license" as not all licenses are equal so some licenses give you less storage allowance, some none at all.  A lot of time people either store too much data in SharePoint, using the allowance, especially with stale data that should really be on an archive tier or data is in the wrong place making it harder to manage and store.

Third figure out where you data is stored

Yes I know this is like ground hog day, going back to the first point, but this time we mean where is the data stored within Microsoft 365.  There are typically three repositories that are used by Microsoft 365 for data storage (technically there are more ways to store data but that is for more complex implementations and we are working on basics in this article), the repositories are:

• Microsoft OneDrive - this is typically for personal data, for draft documents and for backing up your local profile data stored either in "Documents", "Photos" and "Desktop"
• Microsoft Teams - this is typically for collaboration, sharing data with others, being able to message and collaborate on projects, chat and hold meetings when working together
• Microsoft SharePoint - this is typically for an organisation to centrally store structured data with data libraries, often split into department libraries with organisation centralised security controls and the ability to apply meta data to the data

Knowing where the data is stored is key to managing it and it also makes it easier to control centrally if it is located in either Microsoft Teams or Microsoft SharePoint because both of these data repositories are managed by the Microsoft 365 administrator, making it easier to identify where data is shared, with whom and to monitor and control it, protecting the organisation from data leakage.

Moving data to a more suitable repository

Data should also be actively managed so that you only ever store data that is used in SharePoint in the document library.  If data is stale and no longer actively used, it should be moved to cheaper, slower storage.  This still means the data is searchable and usable, but it is no longer on higher speed storage. 

Data that is company data, used across the organisation should reside in SharePoint.  SharePoint is indexed making it easier to find data, even if it is buried in a document library.  Teams document libraries in various sites and channels are similar to SharePoint but are used for collaborative data that is shared with others and is project oriented and both Teams and SharePoint share the same storage allowance meaning that if you duplicate data across SharePoint and Teams then it is using the storage allowance up.

Why should you manage your storage

If data is allowed to reside in SharePoint and it becomes stale, and the stale data grows and grows, it could result in the Tenant suffering. Stale or excessive data in SharePoint can negatively affect the speed of email and overall Microsoft 365 performance, primarily through storage quota exhaustion and degraded search indexing. While SharePoint and Exchange (email) are technically separate services, they share the same Microsoft 365 tenant infrastructure and storage limits.

What should you do next

If you want to check the health of your tenant and ensure that things are running smoothly, that your data resides in the correct locations and that things are running in an optimal way, call us on 01722 411 999 and we can help make sure everything is as it should be.