Office 365 SharePoint Online: Managed Path

Web Application manages a list of managed path. Site Collections created only where a managed path is defined. Site collection has all sites under it in the same Content Database. This is key to how we figure out what database user data is stored in.

Whenever SharePoint receives an 'URL' , the site collection is determined by looking at the list of managed paths for a given Web Application. This means SharePoint has to look at every managed path so try to limit the number of managed paths (<20 is highly recommended).

Office 365 S(Shared) or D(Dedicated) only supports out of the box managed path. i.e. /sites/,/personal/

In order keep the performance high for site querying through browser and search service, this limitation has been imposed.

Note:Key Points for Managed Path
•Managed Paths allow SharePoint to determine what portion of a given URL corresponds to the "site collection URL".
•Managed Paths can be defined per web application (and cannot be defined for host header site collections)
•Managed Paths can be "Explicit" or "Wildcard"
•Explicit Managed Paths allow a single spsite to be created at exactly the given url
•Wildcard Manage Paths allow unlimited spsites to be created under the given url – no spsite can be created at exactly that URL.
•Limit your managed paths to <20 per web application