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Hi all

Many people in the community probably are already aware of the fact that in Q4 of 2023 Microsoft will launch in preview their own 365 Backup and Archive service.

For those who doesn’t know yet, they are now informed 😎.

More info can be read and viewed on following links : 

Welcome to Microsoft Inspire 2023: Introducing Microsoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Archive - Microsoft Community Hub

Microsoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Archive

 

My goal is to have a summary of pro’s and con’s of this MS service vs the proven existing Veeam solution!

As a partner we are offering at this moment a Veeam SaaS solution and my idea is to keep it that way of course 😊, but therefore I have to convince the cloud team that this is still the best solution to offer to our customers.

The MS backup solution is a built-in solution to backup M365 (Onedrive, Exchanage and Sharepoint).

The MS archive solution is to put less frequently data on cheaper cold storage but can still be directly used.

Is this Microsoft service a competitive solution towards the existing backup vendor solutions or just an ideal add-on.

MS never has proven to be good in backup solution, why are they offering this now?

I already have begun with a list of things I already know, but there is still a lof of information that I don’t know and can’t find yet, next to that the pro’s and con’s and open questions.

 @Rick Vanover : perhaps you know more inside information?

 

Known information : 

  • in preview at Q4 2023
  • See links above
  • Will be a backup solution and next to that an archive solution

 

Pro’s and con’s : 

  • it seems to be only available for Onedrive for Business, Sharepoint Online and Exchange Online, not for Teams (pro Veeam)
  • of course only available on MS storage (not away from MS) (pro Veeam)
  • built-in solution (pro MS)
  • archive solution (pro MS)
  • quick recovery (pro MS) : MS claims that backup vendors will have the same features using the API and speed (will that be???)
  • not proven yet solution (pro Veeam)
  • more possibilities at backup vendors (pro Veeam)
  • ...

 

Open questions : 

  • Possibility to organize, centralize more than 1 tenant?
  • Pricing? Only per user or also for consumed storage?
  • What features and possibilities will there be available?

 

Info from MS regarding backup vendors : 

Microsoft 365 Backup helps you protect Microsoft 365. And you likely have data to protect that goes beyond “just” Microsoft 365. Many of our partners offer data backup and protection solutions that include Microsoft 365 sources along with a diverse range of other data sources, third party applications, and more sophisticated data protection scenarios.


That’s why we’re extending our APIs so partners can integrate our capabilities into their data management and protection apps. With Microsoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Archive APIs, our partners can uniquely provide a single and seamless experience that protects your data estate, whether inside or outside of Microsoft 365, in combination with our speed and storage innovations.
 

 

Info of Danny Allan : 

"Today Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 protects over 15 million Microsoft 365 users and we’re excited to integrate with Microsoft 365 Backup to help customers protect their critical business information no matter what happens."

- Danny Allan, CTO at Veeam
 

Summary : 

There is a lot of information not known yet in my opinion, so we will have to wait I think until the preview.

At first I see the archive solution as a nice add-on.

The backup-solution doesn’t have much advantage except being a built-in solution.

 

Feel free to add additional pro’s and con’s and already known information.

Thx.

 

regards

Nico

I personally wasn't aware being I'm just a Veeam customer Nico so thanks for sharing 😊

Definitely heard of this MS service and it will be interesting to see what happens when it comes out of people migrate to that or more move to Veeam.  😎

Great piece @Nico Losschaert! But, here are some more reasons not to go with the MS service. Like you ,Veeam Backup for M365 has more coverage (services), and it is a proven backup solution. 

 

Secondly and most importantly, it ensures independence from Microsoft infrastructure itself, reducing the risk of data loss due within the Microsoft 365 environment. But then, we will have to wait I think until the preview as you said. This might be a good challenge with a prize @Madi.Cristil 😊

 

I’ve found this thread on Veeam forum: https://forums.veeam.com/veeam-backup-for-microsoft-365-f47/native-microsoft-365-backup-offering-microsoft-syntex-t89165.html

A couple of things from my side:

  • I’m excited for the new APIs, which backup vendors like Veeam and others will be allowed to use.
  • Veeam currently protects more services than the native offering at launch - so the new API wouldn’t be used for Teams backup (presumably).

Your comment Nico:  “… never has proven to be good in backup...” → I see where you are coming from but there are some exceptions to that logic. One example is around native applications, such as SQL Backups - those are pretty good. But generally speaking, effectively every offering we have as an ISV is a choice ‘up’ from the native offerings. This is how innovation is born. So that being said, we will continue to innovate and provide a very compelling offering in the market, Veeam Style!

I’ve found this thread on Veeam forum: https://forums.veeam.com/veeam-backup-for-microsoft-365-f47/native-microsoft-365-backup-offering-microsoft-syntex-t89165.html

Thx for this link @marco_s 

A couple of things from my side:

  • I’m excited for the new APIs, which backup vendors like Veeam and others will be allowed to use.
  • Veeam currently protects more services than the native offering at launch - so the new API wouldn’t be used for Teams backup (presumably).

Your comment Nico:  “… never has proven to be good in backup...” → I see where you are coming from but there are some exceptions to that logic. One example is around native applications, such as SQL Backups - those are pretty good. But generally speaking, effectively every offering we have as an ISV is a choice ‘up’ from the native offerings. This is how innovation is born. So that being said, we will continue to innovate and provide a very compelling offering in the market, Veeam Style!

Thx for your feedback @Rick Vanover , much appreciated!

Native backups are nice and can work well (as Rick mentioned, their native application backups including SQL can be quite decenter), but one of Veeam’s biggest strength’s and one that they continually increase the leverage on is flexibility. 

I don’t expect Microsoft’s backup solution to allow you to send the data outside of their ecosystem, and if you can, it’s going to be expensive.  That’s just the cloud-computing mantra.  While increased performance is a great advantage, if you’re hosting your VB365 server in Azure, I wouldn’t guess there’d be much of a difference.  Even so I’d rather have my data stored offsite in another cloud or even on-premise than having it still housed in a Microsoft Datacenter.

I am very excited to see what these new native products will offer and how the new APIs will be integrated into the new VB365 product. Hopefully they will greatly increase the speed of backups and restores. The video mentioned they can do backups every 15 minutes. I’d love to see that in action. I wonder how short the RPO can be.

I’m curious how the Archive product will work with VB365? Will backups of archived data be just pointers? How would that backed up archive data be restored?

To add to the native MS backup comment, Office/Microsoft 365 was first released in 2011. It’s been around for over 20 years...and NOW they decide to release a product to back it up…

Anyone done a full comparison yet? 

Anyone done a full comparison yet? 

I know we are starting to compare things to see the differences and I am sure there are some here that might have.  Hopefully they post their findings.

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