Unitrends and Office365
-
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
When I worked in financial services and backups were a legal mandate, this stuff was extra clear. IT took backups, once a day. But end users wanted to create and delete files on an hourly basis. Those files would never get backed up. The servers were backed up, every day, and retained for many years. But loads of data was lost because it was being deleted before ever being backed up.
Even in a case like a Fortune 100 with big time backup teams and oversight, what a "backup" is is too convoluted to ever be simplified to "is there a backup."
/sigh - Yes Scott - I thought I already capitulated to that?
But you, knowing what you know about human nature, shouldn't rest on your high horse and simply assume that that question is ever a simple as that, and neither should we, as IT pros.
I can hear you saying now, "for me to assume this person doesn't know what they are asking should be considered insulting to them," And perhaps it will be to some, but asking a question like - what is your RPO, RTO, then realizing that in all likeliness - plain jane daily backups aren't what someone wants, well - I'm guessing in the long run more people would be happy with the fact that you asked these follow up questions.
-
IT is always who controls backups. So if you say "but I don't control the backups" then guess what, you just announced that you aren't IT. It's that simple. And IT often denies end users what they want. MS is a very normal IT department here. And end users often fail to ask for specifically what they want, and it is a problem because IT generally only delivers exactly what is requested because they don't have unlimited time or funds to overbuild solutions to meet what they would guess are the intended desires of those requesting things.
In the IT case with Office 365, IT (which is MS) makes sure that there are backups and that MS will not lose your data. If YOU lose your data, that's not on them. Is that unfortunate and make you have to rethink about to address email? Yes, perhaps. But lots of companies don't care about email in that way. Almost none, in fact. I can't think of anyplace I've ever worked, IT or not, that provided individual email restores as an option from IT. Can it be done? Of course. Is it a normal thing to provide? Not really.
-
Also, there is also a means for restoring things that a user has deleted:
-
Email is so something in regards to O365 I don't give a shit about!
I care infinitely more about Sharepoint and ODfB data.
And what you're telling me is that everyone needs to completely dump the discussion of backups - and instead move to the discussion of data continuity. Period. Don't EVERY talk about backups... end users don't give a crap about that.. End users only care about data continuity.
MS in O365 only provides data continuity probably at the 24 hour mark, and only when their own systems are the reason for the loss. Outside of that, it's completely on you, the end user in this case, as Scott has called us, to provide our own data continuity solution.
-
We need a new thread to ask the same question that Willard has been asking for a year or more.
Scott - Should companies that are buying O365 services backup their O365 instances?
-
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
I can hear you saying now, "for me to assume this person doesn't know what they are asking should be considered insulting to them," And perhaps it will be to some, but asking a question like - what is your RPO, RTO, then realizing that in all likeliness - plain jane daily backups aren't what someone wants, well - I'm guessing in the long run more people would be happy with the fact that you asked these follow up questions.
Take that part of it. Let me break down my thinking here, hopefully it will make sense.
- Is asking for "backups" when something more specific is needed wrong? Yes, it is a mistake. This we know, no question.
- Is Microsoft or any IT department at fault for someone asking the wrong question? No, not in the least.
- Does trying to argue new semantic meanings of backup have any possibility of changing the word in the language? No, it does not.
Take these three things together and then ask... so why the arguing? We know that O365 as backups, no question, none. We know that the wrong thing was asked and that "are there backups" isn't what is desired. And we know that "arguing over the meaning of backups can't fix the core problem."
So then two things...
- Why is everyone so adamant that there aren't backups when there are?
- Doing this, trying to define backup as something it is not, has nothing except risk to it. It makes people feel that they can continue to do this, and that just increases risk of failure. The only thing we can do here to improve as individuals and as IT Pros is realize the mistake in the use of the term and look for ways to clarify in the future when discussing this issue. Any attempt at excusing the misuse of the term backup will only encourage the human brain to not learn, to not fix the mistake and repeat it because "it wasn't a mistake to be fixed."
Condescension is good to worry about, but doesn't play in here I don't think. This is more basic than that, there is only one way to look at this that has any value, all other ways of viewing it lead to repetition of the problem again.
-
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
We need a new thread to ask the same question that Willard has been asking for a year or more.
Scott - Should companies that are buying O365 services backup their O365 instances?
The answer to this question should NOT BE yes or no - it should be a question - What is your RPO?
-
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
- Why is everyone so adamant that there aren't backups when there are?
I personally have never said there are no backups - In fact I've asked this question.. and have understood that MS has backups - but I also understand that in any practical sense these backups are near useless.
-
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
- Why is everyone so adamant that there aren't backups when there are?
I personally have never said there are no backups - In fact I've asked this question.. and have understood that MS has backups - but I also understand that in any practical sense these backups are near useless.
Same here.
-
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
And what you're telling me is that everyone needs to completely dump the discussion of backups - and instead move to the discussion of data continuity. Period. Don't EVERY talk about backups... end users don't give a crap about that.. End users only care about data continuity.
I think that this is a great takeaway. End users, even when we are IT in our day jobs, tend to resort to incorrect terms and simplistic compression of ideas that are very dangerous when making complicated or technical requirements. The famous Ford / Mazda partnership is a great example. Ford thought that they could use really simplistic terms for part quality coming from Mazda. Mazda used it to reverse the quality bell curve on them and made one of the best deals in history by only supplying parts that "barely" made the cut.
Backups are too broad and non-specific for much of anyone to really talk about.
-
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
MS in O365 only provides data continuity probably at the 24 hour mark, and only when their own systems are the reason for the loss. Outside of that, it's completely on you, the end user in this case, as Scott has called us, to provide our own data continuity solution.
For the most part, yes. All DR / DC solutions have some gaps, all of them. So you have to find them. It might be the time between backups, or only some files, or the network lag or whatever. There is always something. Sharepoint, for example, has system backups in case of server failure. And it has the recycle bin in case of user failure. And it has versioning in case of file accidents. That's a lot. Is it enough? You can always find a scenario where you can't recover with anything.
-
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
The Short, Short version: If I or my users cannot restore from it, I cannot consider it a backup.
If this isn't saying that there isn't a backup, what were you saying?
-
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
We need a new thread to ask the same question that Willard has been asking for a year or more.
Scott - Should companies that are buying O365 services backup their O365 instances?
The answer to this question should NOT BE yes or no - it should be a question - What is your RPO?
Even that is far too simplistic. There is a reason that we never use those RPO / RTO terms with disaster recovery planning, they are super misleading. For example...
What's your recovery point for a file if lost because of user deletion, if lost because of cryptoware that is really advanced or because of hardware failure or filesystem corruption are totally different things. It's all RPO, true, but it's not something that you can just answer with "five hours", it's complex.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
The Short, Short version: If I or my users cannot restore from it, I cannot consider it a backup.
If this isn't saying that there isn't a backup, what were you saying?
That I cannot consider it a backup.
You are right in that MS does have backups. But what good are they to me if I cannot restore from them when I need them? Same point we're back to again, lol.
The issue is that I simply refuse to accept someone else's backups that I (or my IT Department) cannot use to restore end-user files as a usable backup. Because it is not usable.
In the case of Microsoft's Backup... Is it usable? Yeah, sure. Is it usable to me and my team? Nope.
It's my semantics issue, and you'll likely not get me to change
-
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
The Short, Short version: If I or my users cannot restore from it, I cannot consider it a backup.
If this isn't saying that there isn't a backup, what were you saying?
That I cannot consider it a backup.
Right, so you are saying it is not a backup. That goes against your statement that you agreed that it was a backup.
-
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
You are right in that MS does have backups. But what good are they to me if I cannot restore from them when I need them? Same point we're back to again, lol.
Sort of, but one leads you to discuss what is and isn't a backup, the other leads to discussing how to get the data protect that you need
-
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
It's my semantics issue, and you'll likely not get me to change
The problem is, you've said both that it is and that it is not a backup. Which I understand, can be the cat in the box, is it a backup? We only know when it gets restored? I suppose.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
The Short, Short version: If I or my users cannot restore from it, I cannot consider it a backup.
If this isn't saying that there isn't a backup, what were you saying?
That I cannot consider it a backup.
Right, so you are saying it is not a backup. That goes against your statement that you agreed that it was a backup.
Perhaps a better way to say it: It is a backup, but I don't count on it, because I can't use it. lol.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
It's my semantics issue, and you'll likely not get me to change
The problem is, you've said both that it is and that it is not a backup. Which I understand, can be the cat in the box, is it a backup? We only know when it gets restored? I suppose.
Which is why I default to make sure you have a backup that you and your team can access.
-
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
The Short, Short version: If I or my users cannot restore from it, I cannot consider it a backup.
If this isn't saying that there isn't a backup, what were you saying?
That I cannot consider it a backup.
Right, so you are saying it is not a backup. That goes against your statement that you agreed that it was a backup.
Perhaps a better way to say it: It is a backup, but I don't count it, lol.
That would be better. Or even better... it's a backup, but not useful as I need it to be.
