Microsoft 365 Storage Changes for Education providers

Introduction

Microsoft has significantly changed the storage quotas for Microsoft 365 Education. They are reducing the amount of pooled storage allotted to educational organisations. As a result, institutions must adjust their short- and long-term storage strategies before the new quota takes effect in August 1, 2024.

What is Pooled Storage?

Pooled storage refers to the total amount of data stored across Exchange (Outlook email), OneDrive, and SharePoint for all users within an organisation. Typically:

  • OneDrive is the largest and fastest-growing consumer of storage.
  • SharePoint is the second-largest.
  • Outlook uses the least.

Microsoft 365 remains the recommended platform for institutional file storage due to its ability to:

  • Meet audit and compliance requirements
  • Enable data recovery
  • Prevent data loss

Use of unsupported external storage services can pose security, regulatory, and compliance risks.

However, the new storage limits require proactive steps to manage growth and control storage-related costs. If the pooled storage quota is exceeded, Microsoft 365 services will stop, and all files will become read-only.

Free Tools

Microsoft is providing free tools in the M365 Admin Center to visualize current storage allocation and usage across OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange, and tools to more easily manage stored data and end-of-life stored files that are no longer needed. 

This Admin Portal demo will show you how you can view your current storage usage and manage storage limits across services. For detailed information about Microsoft 365 EDU.

 

Storage Limits

The total pooled storage limit is the maximum amount of storage that can be used across your combined users. For A3 or A5 licenses, use this calculation: 100TB + (number of A3 paid users x 50GB) + (number of A5 paid users x 100 GB) + (additional storage purchased) = capacity/limit.

Additional Storage

Additional storage can be purchased in 10TB increments ($300 USD estimated retail per month) based on needs.

Office 365 A1 Customers

Effective February 2024, users of Office 365 A1 (free subscription) will be limited to a maximum of 100GB for OneDrive storage, within the 100TB of pooled storage for the school tenant. IT Admins have the flexibility to set a lower limit for A1 users.

 

More information can be found o Microsoft website at Microsoft 365 Education Changes

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