A Tenant Admins Guide to the Microsoft 365 Substrate All You Never Knew You Wanted to Know And Were Afraid to Ask Tony Redmond 12Knocksinna Tony Redmond First MEC Speaker Slot in 1997 (attendee in 1996) MVP for Exchange and other
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Presentation Transcript
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A Tenant Admin’s Guide to the Microsoft 365 Substrate All You Never Knew You Wanted to Know And Were Afraid to Ask
Tony Redmond
@12Knocksinna<br>
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Tony Redmond First MEC Speaker Slot in 1997 (attendee in 1996…)
MVP for Exchange and other disciplines since 2004
Lead Author of the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook (https://office365itpros.com)
Editorial Director of Practical365.com<br>
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The Microsoft 365 Substrate Some context and Office 365 history
Meeting the challenge of how to make radically different workloads cooperate around shared services
What does this all mean for Exchange Online administrators<br>
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Office 365 History Exchange @Edu the first cloud service, then BPOS…
At its launch in July 2011, Office 365 was a loose collection of Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync
Since then, lots of work to integrate workloads to create a software toolkit that can drive innovation and new apps
Some successful (Teams, Office 365 Groups), others perhaps less so (StaffHub)<br>
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The Role of Exchange Online Not the center of an ecosystem
Provider of email services to Microsoft 365
Provider of storage services to the Microsoft 365 substrate<br>
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Mailboxes: The Core of Exchange The “regular” user, shared, group, and resource mailboxes recognized by (and visible to) Exchange admins
And others used by the substrate and apps
Hidden cloud-only app mailboxes to capture compliance records
Hidden cloud-only mailboxes to funnel email to Teams
Scheduling mailboxes used by Microsoft Bookings
Special mailboxes used to hold audit records (unified audit log)<br>
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Exchange Online Mailbox Sizes 100 GB default quota for enterprise mailboxes (aids migrations)
Plus 30 GB recoverable items (100 GB when on hold or a retention policy applies to a mailbox)
Plus 1.5 TB archive mailbox<br>
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The importance of cost-effective Exchange Storage Enable large mailboxes
Deliver inactive mailboxes – keep old mailboxes for as long as you like at no cost
Create “Ever-expanding, bottomless” archive mailboxes (gated at 1.5 TB)
Keep customer data in Exchange Online to aid “cloud stickiness”<br>
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Two-way development street Technologies proven on-premises drove Exchange storage efficiencies and native data protection
DAG, log shipping, JBOD storage
Cloud experience came back to Exchange Server
Metacache, OWA improvements<br>
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Which isn’t an app… or anything you can manage… It’s an intelligent substrate platform for Microsoft 365 All of which brings us to the Microsoft 365 Substrate<br>
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The Microsoft 365 Substrate Jeffrey Snover, Ignite 2019 https://youtu.be/uuiTR8r27Os<br>
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Substrate in Practical Terms Common object types, like tasks, documents, and emails
Common API (Microsoft Graph)
Common services consumed by Microsoft 365 apps (search, etc.)<br>
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Digital Twins Just enough data copied from app objects to make indexing and search work
Stored in Exchange Online mailboxes as a common data source for services
Different methods used to get data from apps to Exchange Online DisplayName : Steve Gippy (Operations)
EmailAddresses : {SPO:SPO_20876de2-3b1c-44ce-8773-34499caaa16c@SPO_a662313f-14fc-43a2-9a7a-d2e27f4f3478<br>
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Compliance Records Generated by the substrate when an app creates new data
Teams, Yammer, and Planner
Mail items stored in user, group, and “cloud-only” mailboxes Get-EXOMailboxFolderStatistics -Folderscope NonIPMRoot -IncludeOldestAndNewestItems -Identity Tony.Redmond | ? {$_.FolderType -eq "TeamsMessagesData"} | Format-List ItemsInFolder, FolderSize, NewestItemReceivedDate,OldestItemReceivedDate
ItemsInFolder : 16844
FolderSize : 1.677 GB (1,800,392,748 bytes)
NewestItemReceivedDate : 20/07/2022 15:44:04
OldestItemReceivedDate : 10/11/2017 16:50:16<br>
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Compliance Records Imperfect copies of actual data, but good enough for:
Retention processing (separate app retention policies)
eDiscovery
Communications compliance
Not suitable for backup because you can’t restore the data
Acceptable if you understand this deficiency<br>
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Microsoft Substrate Management Enterprise 1st party app registered in Azure AD
Can show up in audit logs
Dual-write EXODS/Azure AD
Service principal used by Microsoft Bookings app<br>
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What does the Substrate mean to an Exchange Online administrator Services working for multiple workloads
Graph APIs are the preferred way to interact with workloads
Exchange Web Services APIs persist in apps like Bookings because Graph APIs (like Outlook) lack some functionality
Exchange Online admin lags in Graph API implementation
Mailboxes are larger, especially in the Non-IPM section
Many MAPI search folders to speed access to information<br>
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More… Backups take longer because there’s more mailbox data (if you take backups)
Restores are more complex because of the different ways apps consume mailbox data<br>
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Conclusions Exchange Online Powers the Microsoft 365 Substrate
Mailboxes are good places to store data
Tenant administrators can’t manage the substrate, but you can understand and appreciate its importance<br>
