Forum Discussion
Back-up tools for Office 365
Thanks for all your answers. Guess the best solution has yet to be created. Allthough the question stays active, my customers seem to be a lot more relaxed about backups then they should be. The customers I had in mind when asking you about this where doing manual "backups" by copying synced document libraries to a external harddrive. Now, I know this isn't the best way, but I assumed they would at least copy the files to a folder named with the backup date and this creating several weeks/months of backups. Apparently, they just copied it to the same folder, overwriting the files... :smileylol:
My biggest fear are crypto virusses, encrypting thousandths of files. As far as I know that would create a situation where you would have to use version history to set back the files manually one by one. There is no possibility to do this in one action for all files...
My biggest fear are crypto virusses, encrypting thousandths of files. As far as I know that would create a situation where you would have to use version history to set back the files manually one by one. There is no possibility to do this in one action for all files...
The crypto viruses fears me too.
I saw that in the admin panel from OneDrive there was an option to exclude files for synchronisation.
Is ithis a first start to exclude files form a crypto locker virus? When there is a list of those extensions you can make a first start.
As far as recovery in this situation you are able to recover files. In this instance it ecnrypts the files locally, they are synced and are added as an additoinal version. So you can roll back to previous version and maintain access to the data.
SharePoint libraries that don't have version control enabled could potentailly still be a target. In this sitatuion you would be forced to request a restore from Microsoft, and they would resotre the entire site (assuming you notice within a day or two that this occured). If you let it linger, and you get outside of Microsoft's 14 day backup window, you could potentially lost access to those files.
Even in an instance where something was able to delete files entirley, you still have the abiliyt to restore those. If you enable legal holds on your data - then copies are kept in hidden libraries in each site, and you have yet another avenue for data restore.
If you have enabled universal auditing (which you should do if you have not), you also can create alerts on certain data actions, such as watching for important files that may be deleted. This ensures data owners can restore files in a timely fashion.
Essentially the only scenerios I can envision where you lose data completley is if something get's a hold of a privlaged account, Remove any holds, adjust retention policies, Deletes files, purges the recycle bin, and no one notices within a 7 day period (so you are at the edge of the abilyt to get a restore from Microsoft). That alone is a lot to go thru, and you make the hurdle even larger by ensuring all your privlaged accounts have two factor auth enabled.
I am amazed that Microsoft hasn't yet come up with a backup solution for SharePoint.
You mentioned that one could files locked by ransomware by reverting to earlier versions. I didn't think there was a practical way to do this. As far as I know you have to do this one document at a time. If you have thousands, or tens of thousands, of files affected the recovery time would be too long for most companies. If I missed a way to revert multiple files at once please let me know.
Without backups the other way you can lose data completely is if someone accidentially deletes files and no-one notices for several months. We have all seen it happen and without some way to backup SharePoint files they are gone forever.
I am also looking for a backup tool for my organization, and found this tool that have most of the features we are looking for. Not implemented yet still looking for "the One" all inclusive tool, that do not exist.
Keep it will backup your files and mails. Easy to use for ex support staff.
We cover all of your user generated Office 365 data within:
- Exchange Online (mails, calendar, In-Place Archive, etc.)
- Sites (SharePoint)
- OneDrive
Not a complete backup of office365 in all corners as discussed in this. But i covers the restoring of mailbox, sharepoint, onedrive.
If any find this "Backup Office365 all inclusive tool" i would also like to get notified Thanks.
Hi Nicolai,
I recommend Druva. They backup up all O365 documents, Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint sites, and system/application settings.
If it's still relevant to you, send me a message and I can share more info.
Does Druva support Planner and Teams?
Their white paper about Office 365 backup talks about their advantages and contains some inaccuracies. For instance:
Office 365 doesn’t index all file types, so search results will not be inclusive of all criteria across non-Microsoft file types. [What file types are their worried about? Does Druva index all Office 365 data?]
Due to the lack of eDiscovery workflow, the review process can often be arduous. Search results are copied to an eDiscovery mailbox, which effectively looks and behaves like an online PST. This makes the review process time consuming and reduces accuracy [This is so outdated that I'm surprised that anyone could put this in a document. It's a description of Exchange on-premises eDiscovery and not Office 365 eDiscovery.]
Once I see inaccurate or misleading assertions in company documents, I start to worry about their technical capabilities.
Restoring previous version of SPO/Onedrive files can be automated with powershell, see this script for example.
- Good script for restoring a previous version of the file but you need the file there so I see this script more as an Utility that could complement a backup solution...a backup solution means to be backup and restore a file what means not only the file, but also the metadata & file versions....of course you could also be able to do this by using PowerShell. Indeed those backup tools we are talking about are using behind the scenes the same technology show in the script (for SPO): SharePoint Client Side Object Model
