Unitrends and Office365
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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?
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@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.
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@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
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@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.
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@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
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@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.
I don't think that that's a good way to look at it, because that triggers the "backup based on perspective" problem again. I don't believe that "perspective" should be included. Otherwise it's all "who you ask." And that's not useful.
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@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.
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@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
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.
Why would those how things happened matter? You have a point in time that you as a company want to be able to recover to... so you plan for that.
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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." -
@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.
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@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
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.
Why would those how things happened matter? You have a point in time that you as a company want to be able to recover to... so you plan for that.
Because how it happens matters, it just does. Each of those things create different recovery scenarios. Ask it the opposite way... how can they not matter?
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@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).
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@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.
