How to reduce storage costs in SharePoint

by HubSite 365 about Giuliano De Luca [MVP]

Microsoft MVPs, YouTube Creator youtube.com/giulianodeluca, International Speaker, Technical Architect

Pro UserSharePoint OnlineLearning Selection

Master SharePoint storage and reduce costs with smarter versioning strategies provided by a Microsoft expert.

Managing SharePoint storage intelligently is essential for keeping costs down. Versioning, a powerful feature in SharePoint, maintains a historical report of all modifications to files or list items along with timestamps and details of the user who made the changes. Users with appropriate permissions can interact with these versions, including viewing, deleting, or restoring them.

To maximize space utilization and financial savings, organizations must strategize their SharePoint versioning. In this tutorial, Giuliano De Luca [MVP] outlines the optimal approach for setting up versioning policies. He breaks down the setup and management process to make it accessible and actionable for SharePoint administrators.

The timeline provided within the video offers a structured outline—from introductory concepts to more advanced reporting and script requirements, ensuring viewers can easily navigate through essential content. These time-marked segments make it simple for viewers to find specific parts of the tutorial relevant to their needs.

00:00 Introduction
00:57 What is Versioning and how space is allocated
02:56 Building a versioning strategy
05:10 Benefit
05:59 How to manage versioning through the SharePoint User Interface
07:50 How to trim file versions to a specific or all SharePoint sites
08:04 How much SharePoint storage you can save
10:16 Report generated
11:21 Requirement to run the PowerShell Scripts
11:52 Conclusion

In his detailed explanation, De Luca touches upon best practices including the recommendation to activate versioning when creating a list and avoiding a cap on major versions due to the minimal space they occupy. Organizations often find a limit of up to 20 versions sufficient; however, requirements can vary. He also cautions against storing PST files in SharePoint due to their storage impact.

Versioning is also linked to better user cooperation with documents and list updates, providing a safety net for errors. SharePoint fosters a positive environment for storing work by allowing for these historical revisions. However, De Luca also addresses the features allowing access to previous versions and the distinction between SharePoint Online and On-Premises in version history accessibility.

Furthermore, the video provides an essential caution that modifying version settings can lead to exceeding storage capacities—especially when handling large files. For instance, if multiple versions of hefty documents are stored, this could lead to reaching space limits, which inhibits user productivity within the site. Both major and minor version increments contribute to the overall storage calculations in SharePoint.

When considering co-authoring features, it's important to understand how SharePoint manages versions in those scenarios. As multiple contributors edit a document simultaneously, SharePoint tracks and creates new versions to capture all changes. Clear communication among co-authors is vital to prevent confusion and ensure all modifications are correctly recorded in the version history.

Further Insights into SharePoint Versioning

SharePoint's versioning function provides an invaluable means to track and manage document revisions, ensuring data integrity and enabling governance. It operates by capturing the changes made to documents and list items, allowing for recovery to previous states if needed. While it is a beneficial tool, it's essential to apply best practices to avoid excessive space utilization, which could lead to higher associated costs or even disruptive issues if your allocated storage limit is exceeded. SharePoint administrators need to balance the need for detailed version histories with the pragmatic management of their environment's storage capacity.

Storage - Effective Strategies for Reducing SharePoint Storage Costs

Learn about How to reduce storage costs in SharePoint

SharePoint Versioning is a crucial asset in business practices. It helps create a historical record of all changes inclusive of the time, date, and user who made the changes on a per-file or list item basis. Given the correct permissions, end users have the capability to view, delete, or restore a particular version on SharePoint, making the platform highly versatile.

In order to manage SharePoint storage costs effectively, businesses should consider adopting specific strategies. One advised method is setting up a thoughtful approach to SharePoint versioning. For example, setting the document library versions to have up to ten major and ten minor variations has proven sufficient in most instances.

Understanding how space is allocated in SharePoint through versioning is essential. It helps enterprises to better plan their storage requirements and controls server costs. Conscientious management techniques can help businesses not only preserve storage space significantly but also streamline user experience and improve system functionality.

Document Library: Listing updates, co-authoring, and document collaboration is shown to perform considerably better with Versioning enabled.
Disabling Versioning: Though an owner can disable versioning, it’s important to note that this doesn't delete the existing versions. Also, any changes to the Versioning status should be communicated to the end users.
Accessing Previous Versions: In SharePoint Online, users can readily access the version history of any list item or document via the Actions menu.
Storage Considerations: All versions contribute to your SharePoint storage usage, including files preserved due to retention policies and those in the recycle bins. Therefore, careful monitoring of one's storage usage is essential to avoid exceeding the allotted space limit.

Key Takeaways from SharePoint Versioning

SharePoint Versioning is more than a tool to track changes. It is an efficient way to manage server space, offer a user-friendly experience and provide a safety net for any inadvertent errors made by users. So, any businesses using SharePoint should ensure to wisely configure their Versioning settings, keeping in mind their storage limits and user needs. Implementing Versioning at the creation stage itself can be a good start, but what is more important is the continuous monitorization and adjustment based on evolving needs.

SharePoint also facilitates co-authoring, an incredible feature that allows multiple users to collaborate on the same document. Granting a version for each user’s change, SharePoint ensures comprehensive change tracking. However, this also emphasizes the need for effective communication amongst users to make sure changes are correctly tracked and versioned.

Overall, SharePoint provides a robust platform to effectively manage documents and data. And when coupled with appropriate versioning strategies, it can be a powerful tool in managing storage costs, enhancing productivity, and creating a seamless user experience.

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