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O365 Tidbit - Reminder on restore capabilities for EXO, SPO and ODfB

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Hello All,

This came into my inbox as a larger discussion so I thought I would compile this information and provide it to you.

As a great start when discussing restoring or backing up in Office 365 I would suggest reading thru the Data Resiliency in Office 365 document.  Once done with that article here is some more great information:

For Exchange Online, we have the following posted: Backing up email in Exchange Online, do note that we do not back up in Office 365, or have any built in back up “options”, but rely on a series of features to ensure that data is maintained. We do not have point in time options.

Important:
With all the previously mentioned options for Deleted item recovery, note that point in time restoration of mailbox items is out of the scope of the Exchange service. However, Exchange Online offers extensive retention and recovery support for an organization’s email infrastructure, and your mailbox data is available when you need it, no matter what happens.You can find more details about additional options in the following topics:

If you want to manually back up, that is fine, but you would have to do so manually or with 3rd party tools that tie in via Outlook, or have fun with exporting to PST’s and maintaining that data locally.

For SharePoint/OneDrive, Customers can leverage retention/preservation to avoid accidental deletion of content.   This is an old blog but still useful today. https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/akieft/2012/01/09/restore-options-in-sharepoint-online/ it highlights four means to backup SharePoint Online:

  1. Use the recycle bin and version history (built in and OOB and works for 99.9% of all customers and cases)
  2. Use a 3rd party tool (number of them) for backup and restore (like Cloud Control above)
  3. Manually backup sites, lists, and libraries (https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2783484 and How to back-up an Office 365 SharePoint Online site and data https://blogs.technet.com/b/lystavlen/archive/2011/10/10/how-to-back-up-office-365-sharepoint-online-data.aspx)
  4. Create an Office 365 support request (Restore options in SharePoint Online https://blogs.technet.com/b/akieft/archive/2012/01/09/restore-options-in-sharepoint-online.aspx

For the support request option, Site Collection backups are performed every 12 hours and are kept for 14 days. If they want to restore a backup, they will need to create a support ticket and specify the earliest backup time, latest backup time, and optimal backup time.  Say their site collection was messed up during the day on Tuesday.  You could state the earliest backup time as close of business Monday (e.g., 6 PM), the latest backup time as open of business on Tuesday (e.g., 6 AM), and the optimal backup time as Tuesday at 4 AM.  The support team will get you the best backup based on this information.  You should have at least 12 hours between the earliest and latest times.

Know that the restoration is done to a site collection.  The entire site collection will be replaced and any changes made after the backup time will be lost – this is OFTEN more painful than the original loss of items.  Once a restore is requested, it may take 2 or more days for the restore to be performed.

There is a new feature coming in ODfB allowing a user to roll themselves back to a point in time copy of their files.  See Navjot Virk’s part of the Ignite keynote:

https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/53867 (1:05:45 or so)

Finally there is a community written PowerShell script that allows admins to bulk restore OneDrive for Business files in the event of crypto/ransomware attacks.

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/OneDrive-for-Business-Tools-dfb52a4c

Pax