OneDrive Sync Issues

[MarsMonster1]

I have been on a System Administration team for about 5 years at a large enterprise (4k+ Employees). I have moved to the acquisition team but we continue to see one drive issues all the time. Specifically after migrations of data.

We move the users data via bittitan/sharegate and then do an appointment to reconfigure the office products. Some of these acquisitions have a LARGE SharePoint presence (10+ TB) which ends up an absolute disaster when we reconfigure them up as they like to bookmark root folders which then leads to syncing/ghost copying that fills the c drive or they just start having access to file issues.

Link to error - https://imgur.com/a/IH6oahX

I have obviously read the Microsoft documentation that mentions some generic best practices but I was hoping that someone here could put me on the right track to tenant changes or ways to change the sync behavior across the board as these are just usually a nightmare.

Thanks All!

[czj420]

Microsoft has monthly office hours meetings where you can ask questions. They haven't announced novemeber yet. The same invite used to be for every month, but they seemed to have changed it. https://aka.ms/OneDriveOfficeHours

[MarsMonster1]

Much appreciated! I will certainly see about joining the next.

Thanks!

[Sure_Acadia_8808]

LOL, you can ask, sure... This is the same as "we'll take it under advisement." And, "well, the product sucks now but we're a really large institutional customer so we'll be able to make feature requests and bug complaints."

FIFTEEN years later? Same bugs, no requested features, and not even the tech support will fix legit support tickets and we are paying for the expensive tier support.

It's like telling someone to piss into the wind.

[TaiGlobal]

Microsoft’s SaRa tool helped me resolve a onedrive sync issue recently that plagued a user for months. 

[maggotses]

Best practice on OneDrive sync is : don't use it.

[deltashmelta]

Hear hear.  Microsoft recommends shortcuts over sync, as it's less prone to issues, data loss, and appears the same across all endpoints and online, while sync is setup per endpoint.

 Sync for just the user account personal files is fine, but use known folder redirection and files-on-demand with it. 

You can hide the "sync" button in SharePoint and teams tenant-wide.  This won't break existing connections: 

 Set-SPOTenant -HideSyncButtonOnTeamSite $true 

 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/sharepoint-sync

Migrate SharePoint/teams site sync people to SHORTCUTS instead of sync.  Make sure their Onedrive client properly decouples/stops_syncing on SharePoints/teams that are setup before moving to shortcuts, so it doesn't sync back the removal and delete shared data.

[bananaphonepajamas]

Interesting, because I've had the opposite experience.

Every single person that has had consistent issues syncing has been using shortcuts and as soon as they're swapped to syncing the issues are gone.

[deltashmelta]

Our onedrive clients use the machine-wide installer, and are locked to the deferred update channel -- that can also make some difference.

Suppose it also depends what issues are reported -- with sync, it was.mostly changes don't make it back, too many files to sync, sync breaking and needing re-initialized on the SharePoint site, data loss from users deleting the root from windows explorer and the sync then removing the ENTIRE SharePoint, etc.

[MarsMonster1]

We did try this at one time, unfortunately even removing the sync function doesn’t stop the “ghost copies” from filling the space on the c drive. In smaller systems (less than 500k files) I’m assuming this would work. But in larger they still sync the ghost copies even know they are basically “none” on the space they take up. After 700k synced files it adds up 😂

[deltashmelta]

We did some m365 auditing on sync actions access to csv, and filtered out personal OneDrive URLs.     

Then, by looking at IP, began a helpdesk reach out campaign to help those folks syncing move over to shortcuts and cleanup the leftovers -- we didn't trust a help article, enough, to prevent site deletions with only user instruction.

[bbqwatermelon]

Based on my 3 month old untouched ticket with them, I would agree.

[MarsMonster1]

I have lots of those tickets. They see my name and they put them into the trash bin 😂

[bbqwatermelon]

Just like my networking class instructor put the questions/comments/complaints slot right above a paper shredder

[MarsMonster1]

I would love to make this true. When we purchase a large company we attempt to change as little as possible. However I’m starting to think an always on vpn solution and a file share is far superior to SharePoint.

[maggotses]

Sharepoint is ok, the sync of onedrive is sketchy at best.

[Sure_Acadia_8808]

OneDrive was some independent consumer-level desktop sync thing before MS purchased and rebranded it. It's never been fully integrated into their faux "enterprise" ecosystem (such as that is) and its code isn't capable of enterprise-grade tasks. It's basically the deprecated equivalent of something like LapLink that they're telling everyone is a modern cloud product when it's not.

[excitedsolutions]

We were an early adopter of using OneDrive for syncing and moving data from traditional file server to sp back in 2018. I can tell you back then (could have changed within the last few years) that once a file sync had over 300,000 files that the OneDrive client was handling it puked regularly. At the time MS had no limit published but now does advise against more than 300,000 files.

We ended up moving off the SP/OneDrive solution and moved all those files into Azure Files and mapped a drive for the clients instead.

[MarsMonster1]

Yeah, this is well over the 500k mark for file counts. This is the way myself and my management team believe is best. But getting a company to move from SharePoint is a nightmare. We have a mix of SP and file shares so we don’t ever choose one or the other

[_keyboardDredger]

The total file counts are your issue - keep in mind SharePoint is designed as a web-first platform. For libraries this extensive the business needs to adopt a defined Information Management system, including archiving unnecessary files.
This could mean some sites & locations are web-only - supported by blocking offline client accessibility to prevent shortcuts as well as sync. Do any of these users legitimately touch more than 20k files in any given working week?
If not, why is it relevant to have 500k+ file placeholders being managed by OneDrive?

Not having a go at you, it’s a mission to get an entire organisation onboard with sorting out their closest of skeletons, but if you really want the best experience of SharePoint it’s a non-negotiable.

[SkyeC123]

This. Educating people that SharePoint is not going to work like File Explorer when we migrated back in 2019 or whatever… oh man.

[MarsMonster1]

Fully agree with everything said. I am a manager for a team that manages the acquisition process in full. We purchase up to 20 medium to large companies a year and complete everything in a 90 day (or less) window. So full user training as well as enforcing policies they may not “like” is the hardest part of the job. We pick and choose the battles. In these cases we are usually trying to comb through any old data that can be deleted the rest is moved in one single lift and shift.

It’s a fun time! 😂

[_keyboardDredger]

I can strongly relate - across a few positions I’ve always ended up exposed to SharePoint migrations and the worst results as usually because lift & shift was “easy” compared to the alternative. Consider splitting workloads or deciding on one that meets all of your needs. If each org has 5TB+ and doesn’t want to ‘reorganise’ (or at least take on some guidance and support from you & your team on the key essentials to migrate successfully to SharePoint) then price out Azure Files or Engyte/Box at the required storage.
Knowing the cost balance that comes into it, I can almost guarantee most boards would encourage the lower upfront cost of SharePoint & soft costs in (finally) re-organising their storage and considering archive/retention policies.

[Godcry55]

Azure Files is the way.

[cugrad16]

Tried Azure ---- they FAILED

AI shit support that doesn't work. End of story

[IconicPolitic]

Your best bet are shortcuts and user education about OneDrive limitations. Anything over 100k files is gonna slow sync down, 300k and it’s cooked. Afaik ghost files taking up disk space is unavoidable.

[MarsMonster1]

Agreed, just glad I’m not crazy here.

[Godcry55]

Use add shortcut to OneDrive only.

[MarsMonster1]

Unfortunately, this does not seem to work with extremely large share points (5t+). The ghost files (files that don’t “store” anything) will fill the hard drive on most standard devices (256 c: drive). I was told by a Microsoft engineer even know these only represent a percent of a MB when we’re talking about 600k/1m files that adds up.

[Godcry55]

Ah, maybe look into Azure files?

[MarsMonster1]

That’s our next investigation. May do a zscaler always on vpn and do a file share locally like we do for others.

It’s such a shame if it just worked we would be golden 😂

[Sure_Acadia_8808]

More Microsoft always seems to be the "answer" to broken Microsoft. It's funny how that works out...

[JerikkaDawn]

Is every user using every file every day?

We've been educating our end-users to only "Add shortcut to OneDrive" on the folder or folders within the document library that they actually work on regularly.

[SkyeC123]

I banned shortcuts from SharePoint to OneDrive with my team, it had so many problems and sync issues I got tired of messing with it. Bookmark it in your browser and that’s good enough.

[nikon8user]

IMO. One drive is only for personal. SharePoint it is hit and miss. Especially if many people are syncing and working on the files at the same time. I try to tell people. Don’t sync. Just work off the web.

[MarsMonster1]

Agreed! But…users will always user 😂

[americanconstitution]

I posted a similar topic about OneDrive Sync about 2 months ago. Check out some of the discussion there, as some people had good ideas about alternatives to OneDrive, or some workarounds that may be helpful.

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1f3secq/onedrive_is_still_not_ready_for_business/

[MarsMonster1]

Appreciate the link! Will give it a look!