OneDrive for Business - applications overview, limits, administration
OneDrive for Business is a great feature that allows everyone to keep their data available basically everywhere. Based on a SharePoint, it gives you at least 1 TB of data per licensed user (more for different plans, will elaborate further on). What can you store there? Almost anything you want, keeping in mind the limits of the platform.
What are the limits then? First of all we have to remember that there are 2 options for ODfB - Plan 1 and Plan 2.
The Business subscriptions as well as E1 - that’s where you will find the Plan 1. E3 and above has Plan 2 included, which now gives you initial 5 TB cloud storage (if you need more, you can contact support to get it). You should also remember that SharePoint online Plan 2 includes the OneDrive Plan 2 - so you also get 5 TB.
OneDrive for Business service description
Other differences between two plans:
- data loss prevention (only in P2),
- Compliance features - eDiscovery hold and export, preservation hold library (P2 only),
- Ranking models (also only in P2).
You should also be aware of the limits in SharePoint, which apply to personal sites (so - OneDrive for users):
SharePoint Online software boundaries and limits
The above are the much more general ones, but what you should really care about are the limits for sync applications. Right now there are two applications available - the classic client (groove.exe) and the new generation sync client (onedrive.exe). The default is the first option, but you can always check what you are using (See - Which OneDrive sync client am I using? )
As the name suggest - the classic one has much more strict limits, than the new client. The biggest differences:
File size limit for syncing - 2gb vs 10gb,
Number of items that can be synced - 20000 (in OneDrive library) vs 30 million - worth noting that groove can only sync 5k elements from SharePoint library.
So why don't we use the new client by default? The biggest downside is that new client (the global availability version) DOES NOT support syncing the SharePoint libraries locally (for now, so 5th on January). HOWEVER - this feature is available in the preview - see below site for more info on how to test this:
Get started syncing SharePoint sites with the new OneDrive sync client Preview
It should be GA very soon, so check yourself whether this option is available already!
If you need more information about the limits (file types, invalid characters etc.) see the links below:
REMEMBER - you can install these two clients side-by-side! So if you need the SP library sync option, but you cannot use the preview version of new sync client - you are free to use groove.exe for SP libraries.
In the future (or maybe now already) most of us will want to migrate to new client. There are already guides available on how to do this:
Transition from the previous OneDrive for Business sync client
And also
Get started with the new OneDrive sync client in Windows
Important! New sync client is also available on MAC!
As of 16th of December 2016 the OneDrive for Business portal is available in preview to First Release customers. You can finally administrate this feature in a very similar way that you do with Exchange or SharePoint. See the announcement blog to learn more:
Announcement: New OneDrive Admin Center Preview
And that’s basically it - the OneDrive for Business is very useful to keep all the documents you work with in one place. You can sync them from your local work laptop and access them basically anywhere with internet connection.
If you have any questions - let us know. See you in cloud!
Cheers,
Kuba