Sharepoint Online Storage limit - 25TB or 1TB?

Question

Our company is using the Office 365 suite, and we are considering to move our data from our old file servers to Sharepoint/Onedrive. Since we have a lot of data (15TB+), it's important for me that I get a clear picture of what the storage limits are for a Sharepoint site.

I keep reading that for Sharepoint the limit is 25TB, and I can verify that as well when looking at one of the test sites I've created.

But then when I check my Sharepoint admin, I see a different limit of 1.63TB

I've also looked at the limits that Microsoft describes in the Sharepoint documentation. They talk about "Storage: 1 TB per organization plus 10 GB per license purchased", but then there is also "Up to 25 TB per site collection or group".

My question is: what is the difference between "Storage" and "Storage for site collections", and which limit would my users run into when uploading documents to a Sharepoint site? Can I actually use this 25TB limit or is it just 1.63TB?

Answer 1

The 25TB is the technical limit for SharePoint Online site collections.

The 1TB you are referring to is what space you are given by default in a SharePoint Online subscription.

If you wish to add additional space to the 1TB you need to purchase more storage which is available on the on the Site Collections page inside SharePoint admin or on the subscriptions page inside Office 365 Admin.

SharePoint Online Service Description - https://technet.microsoft.com/library/mt842345.aspx

Add storage space for your subscription - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/add-storage-space-for-your-subscription-96ea3533-de64-4b01-839a-c560875a662c?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

Answer 2

You should split the data between various Sitecollections. It is normal for an organization to have 100's-1000's of site collections.

SharePoints scale unit is the Sitecollection. In order to manage huge farms, you need to have some way to split that into chunks that can be managed. The upper limit for a single site collection should be 25 TB.

As an Administrator you are able to assign quotas to each site to keep the overall usage in check, but I would suggest leaving the quota management on auto.