Microsoft 365 Archive: Lower-Cost Storage with Compliance

• Microsoft 365 Archive can quickly archive and restore SharePoint Online sites while retaining administrative oversight and compliance.
• It can reduce SharePoint storage overage charges using a consumption model for archive storage that is at a lower price point than active storage.
• The service can work with SharePoint Advanced Management to automate the archiving of inactive sites.
• Microsoft 365 Archive is not a substitute for managing active content with proactive controls like versioning and retention policies to stay under quota.   

Administrators can use Microsoft 365 Archive (M365 Archive) to quickly archive SharePoint sites and reactivate them in under 24 hours while retaining administrative access and full fidelity of metadata, permissions, and compliance controls. Used with SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM), it can also automate the archiving of inactive sites that use supported templates. For organizations exceeding their SharePoint storage quotas, the cost of M365 Archive storage is considerably less than active storage, which can help administrators reduce overage charges. However, archiving is currently available only for full sites, and archiving OneDrive is excluded.