There are many misconceptions about Microsoft 365, especially when it comes to backing up. Solutions Account Manager Lee, debunks some of the myths...
With many companies now looking to become more flexible in their working arrangements, it’s incredibly important to ensure your companies cloud data is fully recoverable in case any dreaded ‘data loss’ incidents occur whilst employees are working remotely.
The last 20 or so months have been somewhat testing as many companies had to rapidly shift to remote / home working environments at the onset of the Covid pandemic, and since then, the use and deployment of Cloud Services within businesses has skyrocketed. Although some businesses have since returned to their normal working environments, with further uncertainty possibly ahead (as to whether businesses will again be told to work from home if they can), we are currently working with our customers to make sure that they are getting the most from their Microsoft 365 subscriptions. The introduction of home working policies in order to become more agile in working approaches is seeing a rise in organizations wanting to ditch the physical onsite server, and move their data to SharePoint & OneDrive.
Moving to a cloud-based files & folder system works tremendously well for many businesses, and negates the need for any fiddly VPN connections. Essentially all you need is an internet connection, and employees can work from their machine as if they were in their normal workplace environment.
Backing up Microsoft 365
When talking about Microsoft 365, a question that we are often asked from our customers is “do we need to be taking a backup of our 365 data?”, and quite simply, our answer is always YES!
Microsoft’s commitment to the end user is that they aim to have their services running 99.99% at all times. They also have tools in place to help recover any lost data in the short term in the way of version history and deleted / recoverable items folders. However, this is not a full Cloud to Cloud backup solution. Microsoft recognize this and state in their latest customer agreement that a 3rd party solution should be in place in case users experience an outage and any data is lost, data is accidentally / maliciously deleted, or the whole infrastructure is infected with malware / ransomware https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/servicesagreement
Ideally, a decent Microsoft 365 backup product will transfer all of your data to an offsite data centre, meaning somewhere physically outside of Microsoft’s. It will keep your data protected with numerous retention points and for a long period of history, so you have the recovery option to go back hours, days, weeks and even months.
All backup services should be monitorable; your IT team should be able to know quickly when there has been a problem with the backup and rectify it promptly. Further still, and perhaps most importantly, it should be easy to recover data!
We’re big fans of discussing this topic and would love to chat to you about your backup challenges – if you fancy a coffee and chat, let us know!
