Forum Discussion
Michiel van den Broek
Jul 22, 2016Iron Contributor
Back-up tools for Office 365
Started this question a while back on Yammer. What tools do you use to back-up mail and files stored in Office 365?
The fact that your files are back-upped inside and outside the datacenters of...
TonyRedmond
Sep 06, 2017MVP
Right, but where do you back stuff up to and how can it be recovered?
Not to put too fine a point on this topic, I continue to search for the "perfect" (or at least, near-perfect) backup tool for Office 365 tenants. Right now, I can find:
- Tools that deal with the two basic Office 365 workloads - Exchange Online and SharePoint Online
- Tools that backup to on-premises systems or cloud datacenters
- Tools that can handle some aspect of the integrated Office 365 apps, but not all
I think that the industry as a whole is still limited by the on-premises roots of the majority of backup tools. These tools work well in an on-premises environment but struggle in the cloud when they have to deal with issues such as:
- Greater data volumes (like Exchange Online 100 GB mailboxes)
- New ways of storing data (like Exchange expandable archives)
- New applications (like Teams, Planner, and Groups)
- New infrastructure challenges (like moving masses of backup data across the internet)
- New requirements (like data soverignity and GDPR)
- New technical challenges (like handling the wider use of encryption technologies inside Office 365 because IRM is much easier to deploy and use in the cloud, or the lack of a suitable backup API for most of the Office 365 data sources)
No backup vendor that I have spoken with in the last few years has good answers to these questions. Some, like AvePoint, have made a start to move from their on-premises roots to support the new applications. Most remain focused on the basic workloads and ignore the new challenges. Hence the reason why I challenge any backup vendor who posts here to proclaim the wonders of their tool. All have nice marketing material, few have good answers to the questions that I pose.
Sie Harris
Oct 08, 2017Copper Contributor
Tony - how did you get on with the vendors at ignite? Have any of the o365 backup solutions moved on..?
- TonyRedmondNov 07, 2017MVP
Yes, I realize that the Azure datacenters and the Office 365 datacenters are colocated. However, that doesn't guarantee that a backup product can stream information as quickly as you might imagine. Apart from the network paths, there are other limitations, like throttling and API constraints. I would like to see independent proof of throughput.
I'm not waiting for a backup API and do not expect Microsoft to deliver one. After all, their message is that you do not need backups. The point is that all backup vendors depend on whatever APIs exist to stream data out of Office 365 and, if necessary, recover that data in a usable manner. I accept that this is very possible for the basic workloads, but as Office 365 becomes more integrated and more applications are built on top of the fabric (like Teams and Planner), the old-fashioned and on-premises centric notion that backups are necessary becomes less and less valid. IMHO, of course.
- RobseNov 07, 2017MVP
Hi TonyRedmond, since the SaaS solution resides in the same datacenter like the customer's tenant, there are huge bandwidths. Similar to Microsoft's High Speed Migration API, but just the other way around.
For the Team Chats and all around it, again, since there's no API at all, vendors are limited in certain ways.
And sorry to say that, and don't get this personal, but awaiting a "Backup-API" is quite naive in my opinion. What would happen, if developers only use APIs in this way, how the OEM would like to have them used? We would have only 5% of solutions in the market today. Interpreting APIs in different ways made partners like Nintex or Bamboo possible and make solutions like Flow, PowerApps or Bots in Teams useful. Without that, life would be sad :-( ;-)
Happy to further chat with you offline. I don't want to convince, just would like to understand and discuss other ideas and opinions. :-)
- TonyRedmondNov 07, 2017MVP
I had a conversation about AvePoint Backup with some of their executives last week. AvePoint is the first backup vendor to support Office 365 Groups (except those that use Yammer to hold their conversations), so they get some kudos for that.
Chats in Teams are preserved in Exchange mailboxes - but the problem is that it is impossible to rebuild a conversation from the individual items that constitute a chat without great effort. The metadata about stuff like channels is available through the Graph. All in all, an imperfect situation.
Saying that a solution will scale out perfectly just because it is hosted on Azure conveniently ignores the salient point that backup data must first transit from the customer tenant to Azure. I'm not convinced that this is as scalable as you assert, especially when Office 365 provides no APIs designed to backup data, which means that all backup vendors are forced to use APIs created for other purposes.
So, I am familiar with AvePoint... but while it is better than most, it's still not what I am looking for.
- RobseNov 07, 2017MVP
:-D Fully understand your concerns.
I mean exactly AvePoint Cloud Backup, which covers Exchange, SharePoint, Groups (+Group under a Team), Exchange Public Folder, Project Online, Dynamics 365 (starting December).
Conversation in Teams, or some metadata in Planner cannot be kept, since Microsoft says, "we cannot imagine, why it would be useful to backup Planner information" and therefore we do not provide an API (yet). Hence, whenever the API will be available, partners will be able to also cover these last things. :-)
Since the backup solution is 100% Azure hosted, it perfectly scale out and therefore already successfully backup tenants with several TB in size. I still understand, why you still raise your eyebrow, but just give it a try. :-)
- TonyRedmondNov 07, 2017MVP
I have never heard of "AP Cloud Backup."
As to "finally covers," you'll forgive me if I retain some disbelief until I see a backup service that can deal with the complexities of Groups, Teams, and Planner as well as the basic workloads (Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive) and can handle the volume of data generated by a moderately large and busy tenant.
- RobseNov 06, 2017MVP
Hey TonyRedmond and Sie Harris,
have you looked into the latest release from the AP Cloud Backup? It finally covers all the points and questions you mentioned. Feel free to ping me, if there's still a question and you need more info.
Rob
- TonyRedmondOct 08, 2017MVP
Nope. Things remainded pretty well as they were. I talked about the topic in my "Ten critical areas for those moving from Exchange on-premises to Office 365" session, but no vendor rose to the bait to tell me that they had a better solution!