This week on the All About 365 podcast,

I 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 regularly; 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 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?