Microsoft 365 Backup and Restore

Ahsay brings you specialized client backup software, namely AhsayOBM, to provide a set of tools to protect your Microsoft 365 user accounts. This includes backup and recovery of individual emails, contacts, calendars, and other mail items in your Microsoft 365 Outlook, files on OneDrive, Personal Site, Teams, Public Folders, and SharePoint, with snapshots/versioning, and retention policy to protect even items that you may have accidentally deleted from your Microsoft 365 user account.

We recomment that you first read the Overview section (GUI) first. This will help you become familiar with the different functions, settings, and features that can be configured in AhsayOBM. It will also be helpful to know the different features that can be customized in the backup set before creating one.

Screenshots used for this section are based on Windows and will include screenshots for macOS if applicable.

This guide will only focus on:

How to run a Microsoft 365 backup set
How to run a backup job
How to recover emails, contacts, calendars, and files on your Microsoft 365 Outlook / user account, OneDrive, and SharePoint.
Difference between a run on client and run on server backup set

Run on Client (Agent-based) Backup

Below is the system architecture diagram illustrating the major elements involved in the backup process among the Microsoft 365 service, AhsayOBM, and AhsayCBS.

In this guide, we will focus on the end-to-end backup and restore process using AhsayOBM (Agent-based).

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Run on Client and Run on Server Backup Set Differences

The following table summarizes the differences in backup options available between a Run on Client and Run on Server cloud file backup set, and the tool to use (client agent or web console) when performing a backup and restore:

Features/Functions	Run on Client Cloud File Backup Set	Run on Server Cloud File Backup Set
General Settings	✅	✅
Backup Source	✅	✅
Backup Schedule	✅	✅
Destination	AhsayCBS, Local, Standard and Predefined Destinations	AhsayCBS or Predefined Destinations only
Multiple Destinations	✅	❌
Deduplication	AhsayOBM	✅
Retention Policy	✅	✅
Command Line Tool	AhsayOBM	❌
Reminder	AhsayOBM / AhsayACB for Windows only	❌
Bandwidth Control	✅	✅
IP Allowed for Restore	✅	❌
Others	✅	✅
To Run a Backup	AhsayOBM / AhsayACB	AhsayCBS User Web Console only
To Run a Restore	AhsayOBM / AhsayACB / AhsayOBR	AhsayCBS User Web Console only

Aside from the backup options, the table below shows other operations that can be performed using client agent and web console:

Features/Functions	Run on Client Cloud File Backup Set	Run on Server Cloud File Backup Set
Data Integrity Check	✅	✅
Space Freeing Up	✅	✅
Delete Backup Data	✅	✅
Decrypt Backup Data	✅	❌

For more details on the Run on Server backup option, please refer to the Run on Server Backup and Restore section.

You may be wondering why you need to use AhsayOBM to backup/restore your Microsoft 365. Well, people assume that Microsoft is responsible for backing up everything from your calendars and your emails to your files in SharePoint and OneDrive. As the backups performed by Microsoft are to provide a system-wide recovery rather than to facilitate the recovery of individual items for the end user.

Microsoft 365 Backup Capabilities and Limitations

Microsoft is only responsible for the Microsoft 365 infrastructure and uptime of the cloud and apps with Microsoft 365. So, if you are relying on Microsoft to protect your organization from data loss, your data and organization are at high risk if you do not implement additional data protection. These are some of the scenarios that Microsoft is responsible for on its cloud platform:
- Hardware Failure
- Software Failure
- Nature Disaster
- Power Outage
On the other hand, Microsoft is not responsible in any of these scenarios, and you have to face the harsh reality that there’s no guarantee of a complete and speedy restoration in case these happens:
- Accidental Data Deletion (Human error)
- Malicious Attacks
- Viruses/Malware
Microsoft has a retention policy for mailboxes and public folders that are only up to 14 days to 30 days. To support this, please refer to this article for more information: Microsoft: Overview of retention policy.
Microsoft has set the same limitations for SharePoint Online and OneDrive. It only stores deleted items for 93 days, once you exceed the retention period, the data is gone indefinitely.
End users do not have control over what was backed up and what can be restored.
End users have no direct access to the backup data of their Microsoft 365 domains/accounts.

Capabilities of AhsayOBM for Microsoft 365

AhsayOBM ensures protection from data loss, ensuring that all information in your Microsoft 365 environment is protected to avoid disruptions to day-to-day operations.
We offer a fully flexible retention policy that can be configured by days, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and years compare to Microsoft’s limited retention period which is 14 to 30 days only.
Using AhsayOBM, the end-user has access or control over items that will be backed up or restored, whether it is individual items, calendar entries, notes, or even corrupted mailboxes and more.
AhsayOBM also provides multiple backup destinations from your Microsoft 365 to your local machine, to any of our supported cloud destinations, and to our AhsayCBS Server.
Flexible restore is also a key feature of AhsayOBM that is designed to have multiple restore options.
Ahsay has automated backups and manual (on-demand) backups. You are also able to check the restore and backup status with the corresponding backup and restore reports.

Run on Client Key Areas

We are committed to bringing you a comprehensive Microsoft 365 backup solution through AhsayOBM. Below are some key areas that can help make your backup experience a better one.

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User-Defined Backup Destination

Backup users have more options in assigning a backup destination (i.e. AhsayCBS, Cloud or Predefined destinations, and standard and local destinations).

Performance

Agent-based backup is performed on a physical machine or computer with resources that are dedicated for backup and restore operations. Once the backup client is deployed on the machine, the user has more control on the hardware which affects the overall backup and restore performance.

The introduction of the Change Key API has significantly improved backup performance for both Full and Incremental backup jobs, which means backup sets with a large number of Microsoft 365 accounts for backup can be completed within hours.

Easy to Use

Agent-based backup solution has a traditional backup approach that is well understood by most administrators and end users who would only need minimal effort and time to understand the backup and/or restore operations.

Task-Centered User Interface

Agent-based backup solutions make it a good option for users to have more control on the individual backup/restore and resources management.

System Logs Availability

System logs for Data Integrity Check and Space Freeing Up results are accessible for the end users and can be reviewed anytime. Unlike the agentless backup where system logs will only be available upon request from the backup service provider.

Command Line Tool Feature

The agent-based backup solution has a feature that allows the user to configure a pre and/or post-backup command which can be an operating system level command, script or batch file, or third-party utilities that will run before and/or after a backup job.

Reminder Feature

With the agent-based backup, a reminder feature is provided which will display a backup confirmation dialog box that will prompt user to run a backup job during machine log off, restart or shut down when enabled.

More Restore Locations

Agent-based backup offers you three (3) restore locations such as the local machine, original location (or the cloud storage where your backed-up files are located) and alternate location (which is through the same cloud storage but on a different folder).

Restore Filter

Agent-based backup has a restore filter feature which allows users to easily search directories, files, and/or folders to restore.

Backup of Selected Items

To back up the Microsoft 365 user accounts, the backup resources can be user level, site collection level and even item level.

Flexible backup options:
- Only select the required users, specific site collection or items for backup.
Flexible restore optoins:
- Restore all the users or just one user or restore the whole site collection or just one site or restore the whole user contents or just one item.
- Restore items to the original location or an alternate location.

Fast and Efficient

We understand that backup could be a time and resources consuming process, which is why AhsayOBM is designed with advanced technologies to make backup a fast and efficient process.

We also understand that you may wish to run backup at a specified time interval of your choice, that’s why we also allow you to set your own backup schedules so that you can take full control of the time when to perform backup.

Multi-threading - this technology utilizes the computing power of multiple CPU cores for creating multiple backup and restore threads to produce fast backup and restore performance.

Backup job uses a maximum of four (4) concurrent threads.

As shown the technology translates into a total of four (4) concurrent threads.
Index File Structure - The index file structure has been re-designed to improve the backup and restore performance.

Each Microsoft 365 user will have its own individual index file instead of a single index file for all users within the backup set.

This new design eliminates any potential I/O performance bottlenecks when the index files are updated during each backup job, which can occur when using a single index file structure for multi-thread concurrent backup.
Block Level Incremental Backup - this technology breaks down the backup files into multiple blocks and only the changed blocks will be backed up each time.

High Level of Security

We understand that the data on your cloud storage may contain sensitive information that requires to be protected, that is why we ensure that your backup data will be encrypted with the highest level of security measures.

Un-hackable Encryption Key - to provide the best protection to your backup data, the encryption feature will default encrypt the backup data locally with an AES 256-bit randomized encryption key.
Encryption Key Recovery - a last resort for you to recover your encryption key in case you have lost it. Your backup service provider can make it mandatory for you to upload the encryption key to the centralized management console, the encryption key will be uploaded in hashed format and will only be used when you request for a recovery.

Centralized Management Console

Our enriched features on the centralized web console offer you a one-stop location for monitoring and managing your backup and restore. Below is an overview of what you can do with it. For more details regarding the setup and operations of the centralized management console, refer to the AhsayCBS' Setup and Administrator guides for details.

Create/update/delete backup set
Restore backup set
Configure user settings
Configure backup settings
View and download backup and restore reports
Monitor backup and restore live activities
Monitor storage statistic

Centralized Management Console

To offer you with the highest flexibility of backup destination, you can now back up Microsoft 365 users to a wide range of cloud storage destinations. Utilizing cloud destination backup gives you an extra layer of protection in the event of local drive corruption, where you will still be able to retrieve data from the cloud destination.

Below is a list of supported cloud destinations:

	Aliyun		Microsoft Azure
	CTYun		Microsoft OneDrive
	Amazon S3		Microsoft OneDrive for Business
	AWS S3 Compatible Cloud Storage		Rackspace
	Wasabi		OpenStack
	Backblaze		Dropbox
	Google Cloud Storage		FTP
	Google Drive		SFTP