O365 and backups
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Good morning all - it's been a while. How is everyone over in ML land?
OK onto my question.
Backups of O365. Scott has told all of us about his horrible personal experiences with his accounts, but there seems to be a lot more involved there than simply MS f'ed up and broke his accounts. That said, what does everyone do to ensure data continuity of their O365 stored data? Does MS take backups? I'm talking about both email and Sharepoint/ODfB storage. If I delete something (or a user does) how hard is it to recover? and inside what time frame?
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@Dashrender said in O365 and backups:
Does MS take backups? I'm talking about both email and Sharepoint/ODfB storage. If I delete something (or a user does) how hard is it to recover? and inside what time frame?
Yes THEY take them. No they do NOT expose the to you. If your users delete things, MS does not provide a recovery path.
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They replicate the data to different spaces geographically, but those are not resting backups of your data. They are just living replicas of the same data.
There are 2 ways that I am able to recover emails and both are done with Veeam.
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Endpoint recovery - You can recover the pst files from the endpoint backup and recover copy of the emails from the backup.
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O365 Backup Tool - Veeam has released an O365 backup tool in version 9.5 that will pull down your data to one of your repositories to a resting backup from O365. I haven't had experience with it, but, from what I am reading, that is the idea that I am getting from it.
There maybe other ways, not using Veeam that might be better, but I am not aware of them.
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I've been playing with Backupify. Works pretty nicely.
I think there is a pretty good argument to @scottalanmiller's case of not needing backups. Because under what circumstance would you need them?
It's really a small percentage of things that could happen to cause you to lose your data if the system is set up right. Is it worth it? I think that's a case-by-case answer.
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@scottalanmiller said in O365 and backups:
@Dashrender said in O365 and backups:
Does MS take backups? I'm talking about both email and Sharepoint/ODfB storage. If I delete something (or a user does) how hard is it to recover? and inside what time frame?
Yes THEY take them. No they do NOT expose the to you. If your users delete things, MS does not provide a recovery path.
So then their backups are only useful in the case where they, MS, have problems. Making them near useless for day to day use. And only useful in the case of a MS DR situation.
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@BRRABill said in O365 and backups:
I've been playing with Backupify. Works pretty nicely.
I think there is a pretty good argument to @scottalanmiller's case of not needing backups. Because under what circumstance would you need them?
It's really a small percentage of things that could happen to cause you to lose your data if the system is set up right. Is it worth it? I think that's a case-by-case answer.
Setup correctly - wow - that's a bag of snakes statement!
I know Sharepoint has the ability to show old versions - though I don't know if it's one by default. What about things that are synced via ODfB? Do they have versioning as well? If not, they easily suffer from Cryptoware problems if using the sync client.
I know that Exchange also has a default setup of not purgingitems for days or even weeks after being deleted by a user, and should be recoverable from (for a lack of the correct term) the extended recycle bin.
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@Dashrender said in O365 and backups:
@scottalanmiller said in O365 and backups:
@Dashrender said in O365 and backups:
Does MS take backups? I'm talking about both email and Sharepoint/ODfB storage. If I delete something (or a user does) how hard is it to recover? and inside what time frame?
Yes THEY take them. No they do NOT expose the to you. If your users delete things, MS does not provide a recovery path.
So then their backups are only useful in the case where they, MS, have problems. Making them near useless for day to day use. And only useful in the case of a MS DR situation.
Correct, they are there to ensure that the service does not fail. They protect against their failure. Up to you to protect against yours.
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@scottalanmiller said
Correct, they are there to ensure that the service does not fail. They protect against their failure. Up to you to protect against yours.
But your contention is usually there shouldn't be an issue with the safeguards in place, correct?
(Though I am paranoid and would still want a backup.)
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Anybody tried UpSafe?
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@Dashrender said in O365 and backups:
I'm talking about both email and Sharepoint/ODfB storage. If I delete something (or a user does) how hard is it to recover? and inside what time frame?
You use the tools built into the application to recover.
To recover a deleted email, you right click on the deleted items and go into recover deleted items.
To recover something deleted in ODfB or SharePoint, you go into the online recycle bin.
Or the Second Stage Recycle bin.
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All of you are not answering the question that @Dashrender posed. he asked about recovering user deleted stuff. that is all built into the platform.
Granted he titled the topic different than his actual question.
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@JaredBusch said in O365 and backups:
@Dashrender said in O365 and backups:
I'm talking about both email and Sharepoint/ODfB storage. If I delete something (or a user does) how hard is it to recover? and inside what time frame?
You use the tools built into the application to recover.
To recover a deleted email, you right click on the deleted items and go into recover deleted items.
To recover something deleted in ODfB or SharePoint, you go into the online recycle bin.
Or the Second Stage Recycle bin.
Unless the user tries really hard to delete something you will be able to recover it. If you are worried about this being done maliciously you can setup legal retention periods for emails as well.
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@JaredBusch said in O365 and backups:
@Dashrender said in O365 and backups:
I'm talking about both email and Sharepoint/ODfB storage. If I delete something (or a user does) how hard is it to recover? and inside what time frame?
You use the tools built into the application to recover.
To recover a deleted email, you right click on the deleted items and go into recover deleted items.
To recover something deleted in ODfB or SharePoint, you go into the online recycle bin.
Or the Second Stage Recycle bin.
JB - have you done this with ODfB sync'ed things as well?
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@coliver said
Unless the user tries really hard to delete something you will be able to recover it. If you are worried about this being done maliciously you can setup legal retention periods for emails as well.
That was always one of my concerns ... that someone would get the Admin credentials and destroy everything.
Of course, that can happen to any server right now, but a regular server is easier to back up.
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@BRRABill said in O365 and backups:
@coliver said
Unless the user tries really hard to delete something you will be able to recover it. If you are worried about this being done maliciously you can setup legal retention periods for emails as well.
That was always one of my concerns ... that someone would get the Admin credentials and destroy everything.
Of course, that can happen to any server right now, but a regular server is easier to back up.
What if they got into your backup system and destroyed everything?
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@Dashrender said in O365 and backups:
@JaredBusch said in O365 and backups:
@Dashrender said in O365 and backups:
I'm talking about both email and Sharepoint/ODfB storage. If I delete something (or a user does) how hard is it to recover? and inside what time frame?
You use the tools built into the application to recover.
To recover a deleted email, you right click on the deleted items and go into recover deleted items.
To recover something deleted in ODfB or SharePoint, you go into the online recycle bin.
Or the Second Stage Recycle bin.
JB - have you done this with ODfB sync'ed things as well?
I just showed you the ODfB screen in that port you quoted.
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@BRRABill said in O365 and backups:
@coliver said
Unless the user tries really hard to delete something you will be able to recover it. If you are worried about this being done maliciously you can setup legal retention periods for emails as well.
That was always one of my concerns ... that someone would get the Admin credentials and destroy everything.
Of course, that can happen to any server right now, but a regular server is easier to back up.
Grant anyone admin access (intentional or not) and you always lose. So that is not relevant.
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@scottalanmiller said
What if they got into your backup system and destroyed everything?
Well then you'd have some issues.
Hopefully you have offsite backup they can't access.
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Security rules... make someone an admin and you have to trust them.
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I'm exploring both sides to O365 backup.
I don't want to say yes or no to O365 backup software like Veeam Backup for O365 (which someone seen an Ad for) until I have enough information in all aspects to make an educated decision for recommendation.
Is it really needed? Is it worth the cost in the unlikelihood MS really messes up so bad nothing is restorable?
If something is deleted, there's like 2 or 3 levels of recycle bins and such on O365. Emails give deleted folder plus deleted folder deletion recovery, and another level from IMAPI or whatever. With SharePoint and OneDrive, there's also multiple levels and additional features like Ransomware Protection and such.
You have to really want something to go away to be unable to get it back.
We've had O365 for many years now, and never needed a backup. Users have deleted stuff, we've gotten it back. Worst case is we talk to MS support on the phone for 20 minutes, and end up getting it back via some means like imapi or whatever it is.
When someone leaves, we back up their O365 account via Exchange Admin, and store it for a while.
