This week on the All About 365 podcast, Jay and myself finally got back together for the first time since before March to record in-person – socially distanced of course!

On the show today we discussed a topic that comes up on a regular basis; should you backup your data in Microsoft 365 or not?

There’s a lot of information about this topic, primarily from backup vendors who are obviously keen to provide solutions, and Microsoft also do claim that services like OneDrive form part of a backup solution. But what’s the truth? Do backup vendors provide a valuable solution, or is it something you don’t need.

I blogged about this topic over on Practical 365 a few weeks ago (read part one and part two here) but wanted to go into a little bit more detail, and get Jason’s take on the matter as well. Take a listen to the show, and read the show notes below and let us know what you think.

• Are retention policies a substitute for backups? 
  • Retention policies aren’t backups, but they are a part of the picture
  • Other components in Office 365 form part of that strategy 
  • High availability and replication 
  • Security of the service  
  • Recovery of items requires skill 
  • What can backup software do for Microsoft 365? 
  • Exchange and SharePoint/OneDrive with some Teams, or in some cases planner as well 
  • Not other services 
    • Teams voice? 
    • Yammer? 
    • Chat and channel messages with full fidelity? 
    • Microsoft Lists? 
    • PowerApps? 
    • Power BI? 
    • Sway? 
    • Microsoft Forms? 
    • Configuration settings? 
    • Device registrations? 
    • Encrypted data? 
• What do backup vendors claim their service can do? 
  • Recovery times? 
• What about continuity services? 
• Are there any key mistruths vendors usually make? 
• What sort of reasons might you use backup software realistically? 
  • Small item restores? 
  • Full restores? To where? 
• What do other customers do?
  • • • Enterprise customers? 
      • Smaller/Midsize businesses? 

• Three good reasons why you might use a backup solution

You’ll find Episode 47 above, and at our podcast site, on iTunes,Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, Google podcasts and you can subscribe with your favourite podcast app using the feed. If you’ve got any suggestions for what you’d like to hear on the next shows, let us know. You’ll find us on Twitter as @SteveGoodman and @jaywyn