Solved Backup of Office 365 Sharepoint sites
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I like restoring user files from backup as it is good way of testing my Veeam backups are working correctly. It's like a random disaster recovery test that I perform every few months.
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Small file changes can be restored using versioning. I would like to have a mirror copy with permissions locally stored on a network drive, so in case if O365 is gone/offline, users can continue working from the local drive meantime i break my head to fix O365!
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@Ambarishrh said:
Small file changes can be restored using versioning. I would like to have a mirror copy with permissions locally stored on a network drive, so in case if O365 is gone/offline, users can continue working from the local drive meantime i break my head to fix O365!
That will never work. That would be a migration from "cloud / sync storage" to "traditional share storage" and would require a huge migration effort on your part followed by a huge effort migrating back when O365 came back. ODfB is designed to keep working when offline as it is. You have to leverage that, it's the only reasonable option. Going to a network share is just not possible.
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@Ambarishrh said:
Small file changes can be restored using versioning. I would like to have a mirror copy with permissions locally stored on a network drive, so in case if O365 is gone/offline, users can continue working from the local drive meantime i break my head to fix O365!
That's not really how Sharepoint works though. When users access it via File Explorer they aren't actually accessing a file server, they are accessing it via an interface that Sharepoint is emulating. To do what you want you would need to have an entire Sharepoint setup on the local system.
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So basically all users accessing files from SP via ODFB and this can give them "offline" access in case they lose connectivity, for the files shared with them
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@Ambarishrh said:
So basically all users accessing files from SP via ODFB and this can give them "offline" access in case they lose connectivity, for the files shared with them
Yes, as long as they sync everything they might need access to. That will be a killer when first setting up the remote files.
Does anyone know how shared files will be handled when edited offline due to a service outage?
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@Ambarishrh said:
So basically all users accessing files from SP via ODFB and this can give them "offline" access in case they lose connectivity, for the files shared with them
ODfB works online and offline. It uses a sync technology, same as OD, DropBox, etc., so that they don't even know that they are offline. Everything always reads and writes locally and syncs to ODfB in the background.
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@Dashrender said:
Does anyone know how shared files will be handled when edited offline due to a service outage?
Shared or do you mean if edited by multiple parties while offline? Remember that the files are versions and intelligently locked for some file types so that you could do a lot of different edits without stepping on each others' toes.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Does anyone know how shared files will be handled when edited offline due to a service outage?
Shared or do you mean if edited by multiple parties while offline? Remember that the files are versions and intelligently locked for some file types so that you could do a lot of different edits without stepping on each others' toes.
Yes, what happens when multiple people edit the file all while offline.
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@Dashrender said:
Yes, what happens when multiple people edit the file all while offline.
Then there is merge competition. Rarely is it a problem. When it is, it requires human intervention.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Yes, what happens when multiple people edit the file all while offline.
Then there is merge competition. Rarely is it a problem. When it is, it requires human intervention.
As you said, you've never seen O365 based SP go down... so you're right, it's a rare situation.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Does anyone know how shared files will be handled when edited offline due to a service outage?
Shared or do you mean if edited by multiple parties while offline? Remember that the files are versions and intelligently locked for some file types so that you could do a lot of different edits without stepping on each others' toes.
Yes, what happens when multiple people edit the file all while offline.
I saw this issue (mostly because I initiated it) it generally boils down to all of them getting uploaded and input as versions. The last version to be uploaded is the live version.
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@coliver said:
I saw this issue (mostly because I initiated it) it generally boils down to all of them getting uploaded and input as versions. The last version to be uploaded is the live version.
wooph... that's no fun...
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@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
I saw this issue (mostly because I initiated it) it generally boils down to all of them getting uploaded and input as versions. The last version to be uploaded is the live version.
wooph... that's no fun...
I had the same question you did and was testing it out on a file. It preserved all of the updates just the most recent one was the live copy.
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@coliver said:
I had the same question you did and was testing it out on a file. It preserved all of the updates just the most recent one was the live copy.
I don't consider that a good solution - especially if there was no kind of notice that there are differences to be merged.
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@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
I had the same question you did and was testing it out on a file. It preserved all of the updates just the most recent one was the live copy.
I don't consider that a good solution - especially if there was no kind of notice that there are differences to be merged.
How else would you do it? I can't think of a better solution, one that preserves all the data input during the offline time.
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At bare minimum it needs to inform you that there is a different version on the server from when you were last online. Then give you the chance to merge things, etc.
Normal users aren't going to understand how to deal with that. Sure they can be made to understand, but they are going to be frustrated none the less.
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@Dashrender said:
At bare minimum it needs to inform you that there is a different version on the server from when you were last online. Then give you the chance to merge things, etc.
Normal users aren't going to understand how to deal with that. Sure they can be made to understand, but they are going to be frustrated none the less.
What is the alternative, though? And how do you handle notifications and to whom?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
At bare minimum it needs to inform you that there is a different version on the server from when you were last online. Then give you the chance to merge things, etc.
Normal users aren't going to understand how to deal with that. Sure they can be made to understand, but they are going to be frustrated none the less.
What is the alternative, though? And how do you handle notifications and to whom?
I suppose everyone who is saving a new version that is different than the old one should be notified.
I can see it now, my boss and three other employees all take their laptops home over the weekend, and they all decide to work on the same file while offline. They come into the office Monday morning. The boss arrives first and the laptop syncs their file, then the three other people and again more syncing. Then some time later someone decides to look at the file (other than the last to arrive and presumably sync) and freaks out because their changes are gone.. not only that, but the file is different than what they were working on before.
Now can this happen with a file share, absolutely, but in my experience (which granted isn't a lot because this just doesn't happen much where I have worked/supported) it's much less likely an issue if someone is pulling a copy to their local laptop before go home and then copying it back when they return to the office.
But then again, perhaps this situation happens so infrequently that we shouldn't even worry about it.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
At bare minimum it needs to inform you that there is a different version on the server from when you were last online. Then give you the chance to merge things, etc.
Normal users aren't going to understand how to deal with that. Sure they can be made to understand, but they are going to be frustrated none the less.
What is the alternative, though? And how do you handle notifications and to whom?
I suppose everyone who is saving a new version that is different than the old one should be notified.
I can see it now, my boss and three other employees all take their laptops home over the weekend, and they all decide to work on the same file while offline. They come into the office Monday morning. The boss arrives first and the laptop syncs their file, then the three other people and again more syncing. Then some time later someone decides to look at the file (other than the last to arrive and presumably sync) and freaks out because their changes are gone.. not only that, but the file is different than what they were working on before.
Now can this happen with a file share, absolutely, but in my experience (which granted isn't a lot because this just doesn't happen much where I have worked/supported) it's much less likely an issue if someone is pulling a copy to their local laptop before go home and then copying it back when they return to the office.
But then again, perhaps this situation happens so infrequently that we shouldn't even worry about it.
How could that be the case? The situation that you describe is easily, and I mean this, thousands of times more likely to cause the problem. If you copy the file, hold it for a period of time, and then upload you are GOING TO overwrite. It won't warn you or anything. The other peoples' work is just gone. Poof.
With standard SharePoint you do Check Outs so that only one person can work on it at a time. That way you know when people are working on it, who has it and can ask them to release it for you to work on.
With ODfB the people who take it home would be getting each others' updates in real time so only if ODfB went offline or if they were somehow disconnected would they ever have issues at all and the overwrites are carefully handled.
I think you are in a situation of creating the problem by attempting to avoid it.
