Cutting SharePoint Online Storage Costs by up to 70%
Offload the binary components of documents to Azure Blob Storage, where the storage expenses is much less than SharePoint Online.
Storage cost in SharePoint Online is high
When an M365 tenant exhausts the storage allocation provided with the subscription, the expense for additional storage is substantial. Moreover, organizations often must retain numerous files with version history in SharePoint for regulatory or other purposes over many years.
Any subscription includes 1 TB of storage plus an additional 10 GB per user, totaling 2 TB for 100 users, this allocation can quickly deplete in practice.
Moving the binary parts of the Document Library Items to a cheaper storage platform namely Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
When a SharePoint Online Document Library item (file) is offloaded, its binary content is removed and stored in Azure Blob Storage, leaving behind an empty shell/proxy with a blob reference. Despite this, the item’s metadata and version history remain intact. The file can still be renamed, moved, or copied within the tenant manually or using various migration tools or scripts. The folder containing the Document Library items plays no role in this process.
Offload version history only
You can choose to offload only the version history and keep the current version as is. This way, you can work with the file, create new versions, and ensure that the file content is indexed by SharePoint for findability. Additionally, Copilot is aware of the content of the current version.
How to Restore a File Back into SharePoint or to a FileShare
To Restore a file, folder, or entire library, you need to provide the URL to the offloaded content and the URL or FileShare UNC (drive specification) of the destination where you want the files Restored. If you omit the destination URL/UNC, the files will be Restored in place. Using a different destination URL can be particularly useful, for example, when reloading a set of files to an active Teams team.
Large files unsuitable for SharePoint
When dealing with large files such as 8K videos or CAD files, it is extremely useful to Restore the file to a FileShare for viewing/editing. This way, you can use SharePoint (with offload to Blob Storage) as a repository for files that might otherwise be unsuitable for SharePoint.
Features
- Keep Documents in SharePoint visible and with all metadata including version history.
- Option to keep current version and only offload version history.
- Incremental Offload of new versions to files where the current version is retained or new files that have been added.
- Select what you want to Offload (Libraries, Folders, individual files).
- Use filters to qualify what to Offload including file size, modified and subfolders.
- Restore single files, folders, or libraries.
- Restore to different location (Teams or another site). INCLUDING version history
- Support for Copy/Move files that are offloaded. (Restore them from Blob Storage at any time)
- Multiple Offload/Restore jobs can be imported from any data source.
- Version trimming option. (Delete all versions of retain the lates NN versions)
- For security reasons: File should be known that it insists with metadata and version history, but users may not view/edit
Offload During Migration
- When using SMART Migration, you can offload documents during the migration process itself. This allows you to upload hundreds of terabytes at a fraction of the storage costs. Users can then request the Restore of specific folders or documents to their own Teams team or SharePoint site.