Forum Discussion
Help - Office 365 Backup Policy
TonyRedmond, thanks again for your reply! "It's reasonable to assume that Office 365 would not have this success had large numbers of users experienced problems with losing data..." - well, I think success might be direct effect by great job Microsoft is doing promoting the platform and getting users on (ie. work of Marketing and other non-technical departments). I highly agree with the point "even if you have a backup - where do you restore it?". That's opening up a bigger topic than just a backup. De-prioritizing the on-prem Exchange (with promotion of Exchange Online), seems like not be the best strategic direction in my opinion, b/c direct cause of this is putting "all eggs in one bucket" (even though it's very well secured, protected and distributed across the planet bucket) and elimination of subject matter experts in Exchange (and IT overall) from the work force. When (if?) Exchange Online happen to have a hiccup that IT professionals of the customers would need to be involved to get a resolution, they will likely not be available.... and even if some customers would still have SMEs in the work force (or access to consultants), they will not have tools (like no native backups, or 3rd party backups nowhere to restore to).
What is probability that some of Exchange Online databases will become "dial tone" databases in case of disaster? If this probability is anything, but zero, customers may face empty mailboxes.
Would be nice to see:
- more support of 3rd party backup solutions in Exchange Online with clear way to restore
- "Azure Stack"-like solution for Exchange Online
- re-think the approach to on-prem Exchange: on-prem Exchange can play nicely with Exchange Online and complement Exchange Online in some use cases (at the end of the day improving and beefing up an Exchange Online offering)
As far as the probability of taking more than one data centers down as catastrophic event, I was not talking about this type of failure. I was talking about user error that caused the user to request you to restore mailbox "as it was at <point in time in the past>". It does not include any problems with Exchange Online. And by the way, the way to recover with the user error for the single user was to restore mailbox from the backup to PST. No question, that PST is not the good target for backup, but it can be a good target for restore to single user.
I do not have a backup now for Exchange Online. I regret not having one, and regret not having a way to keep the business running with email, if Exchange Online would have an issue.
There's no doubt that Microsoft has done an effective job of marketing Office 365. This has helped the platform reach its current user base, but it's also true that the worth of the platform has been demonstrated by its robustness, reliability, and security since 2011. Added to the innovation available in the cloud that can't be delivered on-premises, you get a compelling offering.
Deemphasizing on-premises Exchange was always going to happen. Customers will still be able to run on-premises Exchange for many years yet, but with a declining user base, the justification for increased engineering resources doesn't exist. Remember, Microsoft now generates > $50 billion from commercial cloud annually; that's a number big enough to justify huge engineering resources. Even in its glory days, Exchange on-premises never approached a tenth of that amount.
Many ISVs offer Exchange Online backup. Feel free to bring your ideas to them. I doubt Microsoft will change their current approach now. This is a journey they began with Exchange 2007 "log shipping", so they are kind of embedded in what they do.
I don't decry the use of a PST to recover data. Because the format is supported everywhere., it is still used for eDiscovery. So in your situation, had you recovered data from a mailbox for a user with a content search, you would have exported it to a PST and imported it back into the mailbox. This is fine; it's an appropriate use of technology. I'm just dead set against anyone advocating for PSTs as a general-purpose backup methodology for Exchange Online.