Backup & Recovery for Microsoft 365 Licensing

There are three licensing packages for Backup & Recovery for Microsoft 365: Standard, Enterprise, and Capacity. A certain amount of Capacity comes with the purchase of both Standard and Enterprise packages, but you can purchase additional Capacity if needed.

Your company purchases the Standard package, the Enterprise package, or both Standard and Enterprise packages based on your environment, the number of unique users, and the amount of data you must protect. Capacity is pooled across both Standard and Enterprise users for all supported applications (Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams) in the same company. The Standard package is designed for light use of M365, such as front-line workers or students who use a minimal amount of M365 data. The Enterprise package is designed for companies with a large number of M365 users and large amounts of M365 data. The storage Capacity limits include both active and inactive data. Only limited retention is available for both tiers.

Additional Capacity

Depending on the unique number of Exchange or OneDrive users you need to protect and the number of other mailboxes, SharePoint data, and Teams data that you need to protect, you might need to purchase additional capacity for your environment. For example, if you purchase 50 Enterprise packages, that comes with 2.5 TB of data. If you have 50 unique user mailboxes/OneDrive users, 2.5 TB is probably enough capacity. However, if the application size for all supported M365 applications reaches 3 TB or 4 TB, you should probably purchase additional capacity.

Subscription Settings

All existing customers are automatically enrolled in the Enterprise package and will have unlimited storage until their next renewal period. New customers and existing customers whose renewal period has ended must purchase a license.

For MSPs, tenant administrators assign users to the appropriate plan. Enterprise features that are applicable at the Company level are not turned on by default, so administrators must configure the features they want to use.

Standard and Enterprise Features

The following features are included or not included with the Standard and Enterprise packages. The retention period and included capacity per user varies among packages.

Usage Calculations

For Enterprise users, the allotted capacity is 50GB and for Standard users the allotted capacity is 5GB. To calculate the actual size of your available capacity, use the formula: Allotted capacity x No. of users / 1024.

For example: 50 x 3500 / 1024 = 170.89TB.

The usage for each workload is calculated slightly differently. The software counts only unique users for Exchange and OneDrive. So users that have both an Exchange account and a OneDrive account are counted as one user:

• Exchange: Individual mailboxes with a Microsoft 365 (Exchange) License are counted as part of Commvault Standard or Enterprise usage. However, all mailbox types (that is primary mailboxes, archive mailboxes, shared mailboxes, group mailboxes, public folder mailboxes, and team mailboxes) are protected by M365 capacity. Group mailboxes, shared mailboxes, or any mailboxes without a Microsoft 365 license are not counted as users, and they are counted only as capacity. All Exchange data protection consumes the M365 capacity your company purchased.

• OneDrive: Individual users configured with both OneDrive storage (OneDrive Quota) and a Microsoft 365 (OneDrive) License are counted as part of Commvault Standard or Enterprise usage (Capacity/storage-based usage also included). If a user has either OneDrive Quota or a Microsoft 365 (OneDrive license), then their usage is counted only as Capacity. In both scenarios, all OneDrive data protection consumes the M365 capacity your company purchased.

• SharePoint: Data protection consumes the M365 capacity your company purchased.

• Teams: Data protection consumes the M365 capacity your company purchased.

Client stats are updated after every backup job completes and this is used to calculate licensing while mailbox/user/site/teams stats are updated once a week. Adding these numbers is not equal to client level stats. Client stats are what is taken into consideration for capacity calculation.

Decreasing Usage

You can reduce License usage using any of the following methods.

Exchange Mailbox:

Removing existing mailboxes from backup content reduces the user count.

OneDrive:

• Removing Onedrive users from backups reduces the user count.

• Excluding OneDrive content from backups at the group level and the user level.

Sharepoint:

Excluding a site from backups.

Teams:

Excluding an item from backups.

Capacity:

• Lowering retention settings.

• Deleting backed-up data from storage:

  • Exchange

  • OneDrive

  • SharePoint

  • Teams

Active and Inactive Data

Active data is data for all users included in the backup content and all users in the source M365 tenant.

Inactive data can be any of the following:

• Data deleted from the source location: This user data is included in the most recent backup, but deleted from the M365 source tenant. The data remains in the backup content until it meets the retention criteria for removal.

• A user who has left the company: After a user leaves a company (that is, deleted from Active Directory), their backed-up data is considered inactive and remains in the backup content until it meets the retention criteria for removal.

License Enforcement

• A Commvault Cloud tenant is in a state of overage if the purchased user count or allocated storage capacity exceeds 100%.

• When customers reach 70% of their capacity subscription, the Commvault Cloud software sends an alert notification to all tenant administrators that requests they purchase more storage capacity. The software sends additional alerts at 80%, 90%, and 100% capacity usage.

• For the Standard package and the Enterprise package, the software sends an alert notification when the subscription exceeds 100% usage.

• These notifications warn the tenant administrators that backups will stop if the number of users or amount of capacity exceeds what they have purchased.

• When customers reach 100% of their subscription usage, they enter a 60-day grace period. In that time, they must reduce their users or capacity or purchase additional subscriptions. Customers should contact their Customer Success Team for assistance with purchasing. At the end of the 60-day grace period, the Commvault Cloud software stops customer backups. For example, if an overage is detected on September 20, backups will stop on November 1 if the overage persists.

• When the grace period ends and backups are stopped, a message appears in the software that says backups are paused and lists all subscriptions that must be updated.