How To Use Microsoft 365 Archive

[@Bradds68]

Hi Steve, exactly what I was looking for. Many thanks.

[@stevecorey365]

You're welcome! I'm glad it helped you!

[@andyoppelaar9936]

Hi Steve, thanks for this. Do you know of a way to do this on multiple sites via Power Automate? Are Msft working on that maybe? Currently I can only do it via PowerShell.

[@stevecorey365]

There's an API available, so you should be able to manage M365 Backup via API calls.

[@shaylen.naidoo]

Hi Steve, Besides Power Automate, what options are there for archiving list/library records based on specific criteria. E.g. When the record was last modified more than 7years ago.

[@stevecorey365]

There's retention policies in Purview that can help with some use cases. As far as Microsoft 365 Archive, we'll see if they get more granular than a site-level archive.

[@jazzchamp]

Great video - answered so many questions that I had! I do have another question: We (company I work with) have purchased additional storage for SharePoint. Once we get our old sites archived, is it safe to assume that we can reduce the extra storage that we are buying? We just have to ensure that the active storage is sufficient for our active sites?

[@stevecorey365]

Yes! You'll be able to reduce your tenant storage once you get sites archived. You'll still pay for that archive storage, but it's much cheaper. I believe your tenant storage increase comes with a contract (for 2 years, for instance), but once that time period has elapsed, you can opt to lower your storage. By then, in-place archiving should also be available as well, meaning you won't have to archive entire sites at a time. That'll greatly speed up the archiving process, since you won't have to wait until the whole site can be archived.

[@0xac829]

What about sites that are actively being used that have older data that we actually want archived?

[@stevecorey365]

That type of archiving will be released next year!

[@KasperBoLarsen]

Correct, restoring an archived site will cost $0.60/GB after 7 days

[@franknielsen3219]

Very nice walkthrough Steve 👌👌👌👌

[@stevecorey365]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@johnwarde2409]

Hi Steve, great video and coincidentally the perfect solution for a requirement asked of me by a Client only a couple of days ago. I've just followed your instructions on my own 365 tenancy as test and it all worked perfectly. Quick question: Am I right in saying that although billing is done via a resource group in Azure, the archived site isn't actually stored in Azure but in a storage quota in 365 separate from the active quota?

[@stevecorey365]

Great question!!! Here's the thing. Your archived site is stored in M365, not Azure. The reason the service is billed through Azure is just because the consumptive billing mechanism Microsoft needed was only in Azure. It's strange, but makes perfect sense. I'd rather see them bill through Azure than spend cycles creating some new billing mechanism. What do you think?

[@disruptah76]

What happens to the Teams and Groups when a site is archived? When deleted the Teams and Group is also deleted.

[@stevecorey365]

That's a great question! I believe the Team and group are still available, but I haven't tested that.

[@mrZerg00s]

I wonder about two questions 1) When I archive a site that is, let's say 1TB, will my tenant's free space increase by 1TB? 2) How do I know how much space in total Microsoft 365 Archive consumes?

[@stevecorey365]

1) Your tenant storage won't increase by 1TB. The archived storage still takes up room, but until your archived storage + active storage exceeds your tenant storage, you aren't charged for archive storage. 2. I'm sure a report will be created at some point, but until then you'll have to determine that using the Archived Sites feature in the SP Admin Center

[@user-aa40]

@@stevecorey365 Hi Steve, so just another scenario just as @mrZerg00s asked, client has maxed out their SharePoint Storage limit, if we say archived a site that was 500GB, would that free up 500GB from their original SharePoint limit now since 500GB has been archived?

[@ChellZ-h7g]

Re-activating the entire site doesn't make sense to be. Often users just need a file or a folder from the archived... but you have to pay for reactivating the entire site

[@stevecorey365]

At the moment, yes! We'll get more granular archiving next year.