Unitrends and Office365
-
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender 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:
@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.
Frankly - it's not useful to you at all. It's only useful to MS in the situation where MS has a failure they need to recover from. And what's worse, we have no idea how old their backups are.
You can't really say that Microsoft's continuity doesn't matter to you.
Considering that most people have recovery times that far exceed the lack of recovery of what is available in MS's system, MS's ability to restore their failed system might not be as valuable you think. it might just be better for them to spin up a whole new whatever and we just start restoring our own data continuity plan. Maybe, maybe not.
-
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
Example... CEO wants to know if there are backups.
CEO asks IT Manager: "Manager needs someone else to restore so says no backups."
CEO asks Backup Manager: "Backup manager says yes, there are backups"
CEO asks end users: "End users have no control and say No, our data is not backed up."
CEO asks senior admin: "Senior Admin has backup access and says Yes, we have backups."
CEO asks junior admin: "No, no backups for me."
CEO asks janitor: "Jantor says no backups."That is why the backup team sends out emails a time or two per year reminding folks that Yes,
That makes no difference as long as perspective exists. If "I have access to do the restore" is a requirement for "are there backups" that email is just lies. Because it is sent to people to whom there are no backups.
-
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
Example... CEO wants to know if there are backups.
CEO asks IT Manager: "Manager needs someone else to restore so says no backups."
CEO asks Backup Manager: "Backup manager says yes, there are backups"
CEO asks end users: "End users have no control and say No, our data is not backed up."
CEO asks senior admin: "Senior Admin has backup access and says Yes, we have backups."
CEO asks junior admin: "No, no backups for me."
CEO asks janitor: "Jantor says no backups."That is why the backup team sends out emails a time or two per year reminding folks that Yes, we do have backups, and they are taken at such and such a time every night.
Everybody's on the same page (yes, we did this at my last job for a while).
Remember, Microsoft could remind you every day that you HAVE backups.
-
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender 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:
@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.
Frankly - it's not useful to you at all. It's only useful to MS in the situation where MS has a failure they need to recover from. And what's worse, we have no idea how old their backups are.
You can't really say that Microsoft's continuity doesn't matter to you.
Considering that most people have recovery times that far exceed the lack of recovery of what is available in MS's system, MS's ability to restore their failed system might not be as valuable you think. it might just be better for them to spin up a whole new whatever and we just start restoring our own data continuity plan. Maybe, maybe not.
I don't have details but I'm unsure what you are saying. MS can likely recover very quickly. LTO restores are quite fast, and don't congest the WAN link like customer restores would.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
Example... CEO wants to know if there are backups.
CEO asks IT Manager: "Manager needs someone else to restore so says no backups."
CEO asks Backup Manager: "Backup manager says yes, there are backups"
CEO asks end users: "End users have no control and say No, our data is not backed up."
CEO asks senior admin: "Senior Admin has backup access and says Yes, we have backups."
CEO asks junior admin: "No, no backups for me."
CEO asks janitor: "Jantor says no backups."That is why the backup team sends out emails a time or two per year reminding folks that Yes, we do have backups, and they are taken at such and such a time every night.
Everybody's on the same page (yes, we did this at my last job for a while).
Remember, Microsoft could remind you every day that you HAVE backups.
Sure, as long as they also remind us that they only thing they are useful for is if MS has a glitch that they, MS, has to recover from.
Dafyre's example specifically tells the users what capabilities IT has for recovering their end user's data. i.e. daily single backups, hourly, etc. Keep for 2 weeks, etc.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender 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:
@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.
Frankly - it's not useful to you at all. It's only useful to MS in the situation where MS has a failure they need to recover from. And what's worse, we have no idea how old their backups are.
You can't really say that Microsoft's continuity doesn't matter to you.
Considering that most people have recovery times that far exceed the lack of recovery of what is available in MS's system, MS's ability to restore their failed system might not be as valuable you think. it might just be better for them to spin up a whole new whatever and we just start restoring our own data continuity plan. Maybe, maybe not.
I don't have details but I'm unsure what you are saying. MS can likely recover very quickly. LTO restores are quite fast, and don't congest the WAN link like customer restores would.
But if their LTO restore is from 24 hours ago, that data might be completely useless. Granted in a ODfB setup it's unlikely that most would be useless - but assuming we had a Unitrends backup appliance backing up O365, we'd still be restoring under our own backup RPO.
-
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
Example... CEO wants to know if there are backups.
CEO asks IT Manager: "Manager needs someone else to restore so says no backups."
CEO asks Backup Manager: "Backup manager says yes, there are backups"
CEO asks end users: "End users have no control and say No, our data is not backed up."
CEO asks senior admin: "Senior Admin has backup access and says Yes, we have backups."
CEO asks junior admin: "No, no backups for me."
CEO asks janitor: "Jantor says no backups."That is why the backup team sends out emails a time or two per year reminding folks that Yes, we do have backups, and they are taken at such and such a time every night.
Everybody's on the same page (yes, we did this at my last job for a while).
Remember, Microsoft could remind you every day that you HAVE backups.
Sure, as long as they also remind us that they only thing they are useful for is if MS has a glitch that they, MS, has to recover from.
Dafyre's example specifically tells the users what capabilities IT has for recovering their end user's data. i.e. daily single backups, hourly, etc. Keep for 2 weeks, etc.
Sure, but in both cases, if you consider that YOUR ability to restore defines something as a backup, the MS = IT and they say "there are backups " and to everyone else, there are no backups.
-
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender 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:
@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.
Frankly - it's not useful to you at all. It's only useful to MS in the situation where MS has a failure they need to recover from. And what's worse, we have no idea how old their backups are.
You can't really say that Microsoft's continuity doesn't matter to you.
Considering that most people have recovery times that far exceed the lack of recovery of what is available in MS's system, MS's ability to restore their failed system might not be as valuable you think. it might just be better for them to spin up a whole new whatever and we just start restoring our own data continuity plan. Maybe, maybe not.
I don't have details but I'm unsure what you are saying. MS can likely recover very quickly. LTO restores are quite fast, and don't congest the WAN link like customer restores would.
But if their LTO restore is from 24 hours ago, that data might be completely useless. Granted in a ODfB setup it's unlikely that most would be useless - but assuming we had a Unitrends backup appliance backing up O365, we'd still be restoring under our own backup RPO.
True, but if you set your own RPO to 24 hours... you might have the same problem
-
The way you talk about us IT workers not being IT in this scenario.
It's like the business authorizing a group of end users to back up their own stuff.
-
@BRRABill said in Unitrends and Office365:
The way you talk about us IT workers not being IT in this scenario.
It's like the business authorizing a group of end users to back up their own stuff.
No, I'm trying to point out that that is how it is being thought about when end user perspective is involved. The more crazy it sounds, the more you are getting my point.
-
Some of the things I am learning from CISSP
Here is the answer this question of whether Microsoft's backup is sufficient:
- BIA needs to be done to assess how much downtime is acceptable.
- We must also determine at what level are restorations necessary (email, mailbox, etc)
- Once the downtime and level is determined, a policy should be made stating acceptable backups for the organization
- At this point, we can assess if Microsoft's Office 365's default retention is acceptable for your organization.
-
I would say that is the textbook answer to your question @wirestyle22
-
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
Example... CEO wants to know if there are backups.
CEO asks IT Manager: "Manager needs someone else to restore so says no backups."
CEO asks Backup Manager: "Backup manager says yes, there are backups"
CEO asks end users: "End users have no control and say No, our data is not backed up."
CEO asks senior admin: "Senior Admin has backup access and says Yes, we have backups."
CEO asks junior admin: "No, no backups for me."
CEO asks janitor: "Jantor says no backups."That is why the backup team sends out emails a time or two per year reminding folks that Yes, we do have backups, and they are taken at such and such a time every night.
Everybody's on the same page (yes, we did this at my last job for a while).
Remember, Microsoft could remind you every day that you HAVE backups.
Sure, as long as they also remind us that they only thing they are useful for is if MS has a glitch that they, MS, has to recover from.
Dafyre's example specifically tells the users what capabilities IT has for recovering their end user's data. i.e. daily single backups, hourly, etc. Keep for 2 weeks, etc.
Sure, but in both cases, if you consider that YOUR ability to restore defines something as a backup, the MS = IT and they say "there are backups " and to everyone else, there are no backups.
I totally get what you are saying here - but I'm not in the Dayfre camp - my ability to restore does not mean no backup - but in this case it means backups that are 99.999% useless to me. Most of the time I'm going to care about the backups that I CAN access to do recovery from.
-
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
Example... CEO wants to know if there are backups.
CEO asks IT Manager: "Manager needs someone else to restore so says no backups."
CEO asks Backup Manager: "Backup manager says yes, there are backups"
CEO asks end users: "End users have no control and say No, our data is not backed up."
CEO asks senior admin: "Senior Admin has backup access and says Yes, we have backups."
CEO asks junior admin: "No, no backups for me."
CEO asks janitor: "Jantor says no backups."That is why the backup team sends out emails a time or two per year reminding folks that Yes, we do have backups, and they are taken at such and such a time every night.
Everybody's on the same page (yes, we did this at my last job for a while).
Remember, Microsoft could remind you every day that you HAVE backups.
Sure, as long as they also remind us that they only thing they are useful for is if MS has a glitch that they, MS, has to recover from.
Dafyre's example specifically tells the users what capabilities IT has for recovering their end user's data. i.e. daily single backups, hourly, etc. Keep for 2 weeks, etc.
Sure, but in both cases, if you consider that YOUR ability to restore defines something as a backup, the MS = IT and they say "there are backups " and to everyone else, there are no backups.
I totally get what you are saying here - but I'm not in the Dayfre camp - my ability to restore does not mean no backup - but in this case it means backups that are 99.999% useless to me. Most of the time I'm going to care about the backups that I CAN access to do recovery from.
I find that odd, as an end user that is very rarely what I want. I want backups that my IT department can restore from.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
Example... CEO wants to know if there are backups.
CEO asks IT Manager: "Manager needs someone else to restore so says no backups."
CEO asks Backup Manager: "Backup manager says yes, there are backups"
CEO asks end users: "End users have no control and say No, our data is not backed up."
CEO asks senior admin: "Senior Admin has backup access and says Yes, we have backups."
CEO asks junior admin: "No, no backups for me."
CEO asks janitor: "Jantor says no backups."That is why the backup team sends out emails a time or two per year reminding folks that Yes, we do have backups, and they are taken at such and such a time every night.
Everybody's on the same page (yes, we did this at my last job for a while).
Remember, Microsoft could remind you every day that you HAVE backups.
Sure, as long as they also remind us that they only thing they are useful for is if MS has a glitch that they, MS, has to recover from.
Dafyre's example specifically tells the users what capabilities IT has for recovering their end user's data. i.e. daily single backups, hourly, etc. Keep for 2 weeks, etc.
Sure, but in both cases, if you consider that YOUR ability to restore defines something as a backup, the MS = IT and they say "there are backups " and to everyone else, there are no backups.
I totally get what you are saying here - but I'm not in the Dayfre camp - my ability to restore does not mean no backup - but in this case it means backups that are 99.999% useless to me. Most of the time I'm going to care about the backups that I CAN access to do recovery from.
I find that odd, as an end user that is very rarely what I want. I want backups that my IT department can restore from.
Well, I suppose from that POV, I could purchase some option from MS that they could restore from that fits my requirements. Which for me are 2 weeks worth of once a day backups. Does MS have an option for this?
-
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
Example... CEO wants to know if there are backups.
CEO asks IT Manager: "Manager needs someone else to restore so says no backups."
CEO asks Backup Manager: "Backup manager says yes, there are backups"
CEO asks end users: "End users have no control and say No, our data is not backed up."
CEO asks senior admin: "Senior Admin has backup access and says Yes, we have backups."
CEO asks junior admin: "No, no backups for me."
CEO asks janitor: "Jantor says no backups."That is why the backup team sends out emails a time or two per year reminding folks that Yes, we do have backups, and they are taken at such and such a time every night.
Everybody's on the same page (yes, we did this at my last job for a while).
Remember, Microsoft could remind you every day that you HAVE backups.
Sure, as long as they also remind us that they only thing they are useful for is if MS has a glitch that they, MS, has to recover from.
Dafyre's example specifically tells the users what capabilities IT has for recovering their end user's data. i.e. daily single backups, hourly, etc. Keep for 2 weeks, etc.
Sure, but in both cases, if you consider that YOUR ability to restore defines something as a backup, the MS = IT and they say "there are backups " and to everyone else, there are no backups.
I totally get what you are saying here - but I'm not in the Dayfre camp - my ability to restore does not mean no backup - but in this case it means backups that are 99.999% useless to me. Most of the time I'm going to care about the backups that I CAN access to do recovery from.
I find that odd, as an end user that is very rarely what I want. I want backups that my IT department can restore from.
Well, I suppose from that POV, I could purchase some option from MS that they could restore from that fits my requirements. Which for me are 2 weeks worth of once a day backups. Does MS have an option for this?
Yes, but it has some end user controls so doesn't meet your actual needs, I don't think. That's one of the problems - if end users can restore, it often defeats other components of the system.
But you saw my link above, they do offer several different kinds of protections. But each service is unique so you have to check them one by one.
-
I'd also like to add that data retention is usually a C-level policy that IT follows. If it fulfills policy requirements then it is sufficient.
-
@IRJ said in Unitrends and Office365:
I'd also like to add that data retention is usually a C-level policy that IT follows. If it fulfills policy requirements then it is sufficient.
And in the SMB, many C level requirements come down to things like "does it have a backup", which is how we get into these kinds of problems
-
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@IRJ said in Unitrends and Office365:
I'd also like to add that data retention is usually a C-level policy that IT follows. If it fulfills policy requirements then it is sufficient.
And in the SMB, many C level requirements come down to things like "does it have a backup", which is how we get into these kinds of problems
I came from SMB and the last two places I worked there was already a BIA done or I worked on one. At a minimum there has to be some type of prioritization for restoration of network services in case of disaster. Acceptable downtime should be defined by service. Which opens up a good discussion of backups on each service.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@BRRABill said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@BRRABill said in Unitrends and Office365:
Office365 backup always seems to get a thread started every month or so...
Mostly people asking if they should.
And isn't the final answer (after much of the same wandering) usually backup if you can?
It's "do the right thing for you."
I am trying to help answer this question. After this was brought up we talked about having access to the backup. Which @scottalanmiller pointed out has nothing do with business requirements.
