Get the overview of the Next Generation OneDrive for Business Client - MSDigest.net

Yesterday Microsoft announced a new long awaited updated version of the OneDrive for Business Sync client. The Sync client is used to keep a local copy of data in your OneDrive for Business. Now we only have one OneDrive, which is able to handle both our personal OneDrive and OneDrive for Business. This now client is in my opinion way more reliable and faster to sync between your local copies and OneDrive for Business.

Microsoft has the previous months run a preview program and has now made the OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client is now available for deployment.

Top priorities for this new updated OneDrive for Business release were:

Improved reliability and performance
Delivering core capabilities such as selective sync
Support for large files up to 10 GB in size
Removing the 20,000 file sync limit

For IT Professionals, Microsoft provide the ability to silently deploy and configure the client on behalf of your end users.

The OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client is available for Windows 7, 8 and 10 (8.1 support will be added in the first quarter of 2016) and Mac OS X 10.9 and above.

As of today the Windows client is available for download, the Mac client will be available before the end of December 2015.

This new version will only support sync with OneDrive for Business. Support for sync of SharePoint libraries will be added in future releases.

So if you require SharePoint sync, you will have to keep your existing client running side-by-side the new Next Gen Sync Client.

Limitations

There are a few limitations with the new Next Gen Sync Client:

Windows 8.1 not supported – support will be added in the first quarter of 2016
SharePoint Document Library sync – support will be added in future releases
Office integration
- A user can’t participate in a co-authoring session on a document
- The Most Recently Used (MRU) list is updated with the local path to the document and not the cloud location
- Sharing via OneDrive for Business in the Office apps is not available
- Modern attachments are not available in Outlook 2016, since Outlook thinks the document is a local document

Setup and install

This post is meant as an overview and not a detailed install guide. So please take a look a these great deployment guides from Microsoft listed below:

Download

The Next Generation OneDrive for Business Client is available in two version, one installer (exe) and a deployment package.

Below are direct download links to Microsoft Download for the different versions of the latest OneDrive for Business release (December 2015):

Installer: The new OneDrive for Business sync client
Deployment Package: The new OneDrive for Business Deployment Package

OneDrive for Business Storage Plan updates

Also announced yesterday together with the new sync client, was updates to the storage plans of OneDrive for Business. which is now unlimited storage for OneDrive for Business users.

Office 365 customers with premium Enterprise, Government and Education plans will receive OneDrive for Business unlimited storage. Specifically, this includes unlimited storage for individuals in organizations with more than five people subscribing to one of the following plans:

Office 365 Enterprise E3, E4 and E5
Office 365 Government E3, E4 and E5
Office 365 Education
OneDrive for Business Plan 2 and SharePoint Online Plan 2

Microsoft will begin rolling out increased storage to these customers by the end of this month (Dec 2015), starting with an automatic increase from 1 TB to 5 TB per user. The rollout is expected to be completed the end of March 2016.