OneDrive for Business / SharePoint - Permissions, 700,000 files

Question

Scenario:

File server:
1.5TB of data
700,000 files
85,000 folders

‘Main’ shared folder structure
|---Main
| ## |--- Accounting
| ######## |--- Banking
| ## |--- Sales
| ######## |--- Commissions
| ## |---Management
| ######## |--- Contractors
Etc.

Questions

1. Can UserA have access to ‘Main’ folder and all subfolders and can UserB only have access to ‘Banking’ folder and nothing else? Meaning UserB won’t be able to access any other sub folders in ‘Accounting’ or any other folders in the ‘Main’ folder directory tree
2. Can SharePoint/OneDrive Business hide folders that users don’t have access to?
3. Say you have 20 x Microsoft 365 Business Basic licenses, how much storage do you have in SharePoint? Is it 20TB of SharePoint storage or is SharePoint storage part of the Office365 Global Admin account which only has 1TB of storage?
4. What do you do in terms of performance issues if you have more than 300,000 files? For optimum performance, we recommend storing no more than 300,000 files per user across all synced document libraries, even if you're using Files On-Demand or choosing only some folders within the libraries to sync.
5. What do you do if you are using files on demand and performance is very bad with 700,000 files?
6. If you are looking to replace the file server above, can SharePoint archive this or is SharePoint not meant to be used this way?
7. Is there any reason to use Dropbox instead of OneDrive for Business/SharePoint? Dropbox is a lot more pricier and still have performance issues with over 300,000 files.

Answer 1

Don't replicate a file server in SharePoint. You should instead look at breaking these out into multiple site collections. Banking, for example, should likely be it's own site collection, etc. Simply the layout by flattening it rather than trying to replicate the hierarchical nature of a file share. Also attempt to avoid permissions inheritance breaks like you would in a file share; use side-wide permissions instead.

SharePoint is security-trimmed, meaning if you don't have access to the object, you do not see it.

Storage limits are outlined at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/sharepoint-online-service-description/sharepoint-online-limits#limits-by-plan; 1TB base storage +10GB/license. You can purchase more storage, as well. OneDrive has 1TB of storage but is designed for personal documents.

For OneDrive sync, don't sync that much. Teach users how to access documents from the web rather than attempting to synchronize everything. Don't attempt to use sync for >100K files.

SharePoint can replace a file server, but you need to structure it differently.

Can't answer on Dropbox, that is your call to make. SharePoint can ultimately replace your file server.

Answer 2

To answer your questions:

1. You can set user permission in OneDrive folders individually, for example, UserA has access on all folders while UserB has access to only “Banking” folder.
   Please see the document here for reference on sharing: Share files and folders in OneDrive (personal).
2. If users do not have access to a folder or file at all, the folder or file will be invisible to them.
3. The total storage per organization for Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan is 1 TB plus 10 GB per license purchased (Office 365 Extra File Storage add-on). In your scenario, it would be 1TB of storage by default.
4. As Trevor suggests, if you have a large number of documents to store in cloud, consider putting them into multiple site collections. Also pay attention to SharePoint limits when you manage documents in SharePoint Online/personal OneDrive sites.
5. Also as Trevor suggests, SharePoint can replace a file server, but there are plenty of limits which you need to take into consideration.

   ---

If an Answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
**Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread. **