How to Use Microsoft 365 Backup | Quisitive
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How to Use Microsoft 365 Backup
January 22, 2025
Steve Corey
Understand how Microsoft 365 Backup works and how you can start to use it in your organization, including configurations, backups, and restores.
Blog Feature Image How to Use Microsoft 365 Backup

Data protection is paramount in today’s digital age. Microsoft 365 Backup is a powerful tool designed to safeguard your organization’s data and ensure that you can recover quickly from data loss incidents. In this blog post and video, I’ll explore key features and share how to use Microsoft 365 Backup to set up backup policies, restore data, and more.

What is Microsoft 365 Backup?

Microsoft 365 Backup is a service that allows you to back up SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange mailboxes. This tool offers several distinct advantages over third-party solutions, including seamless integration with Microsoft services and the ability to manage backups within the Microsoft 365 environment.

Key Features and Benefits

  1. Quick Backups and Restores: Microsoft 365 Backup provides fast backup and restore operations. For instance, it can restore up to 1,000 OneDrive accounts, SharePoint sites, or Exchange mailboxes in about 12 hours.
  2. Rollback and Roll Forward Operations: Depending on the type of data, Microsoft 365 Backup offers rollback (for SharePoint and OneDrive) and roll forward (for Exchange mailboxes) operations. Rollback restores the data to its state at the backup point, while roll forward retains newer data added after the backup while still restoring data from the last backup point.
  3. Microsoft 365 Data Consolidation: One of the biggest benefits is that your data remains within the Microsoft 365 service boundary, ensuring it stays within your control and in the same geolocation as your primary data.
  4. Immutable Backups: Backups are read-only and cannot be altered, providing protection against cyber-attacks and ransomware.
  5. Role-Based Access Control: The service supports role-based access control, allowing Global admins, Exchange admins, and SharePoint admins to manage backups according to their roles.
  6. Restore to New Locations: You can restore data to new locations, such as a new URL for SharePoint sites or a new folder for Exchange mailboxes, without overwriting existing data.

How to Configure Microsoft 365 Backup

  1. Setup: To set up Microsoft 365 Backup, navigate to the Microsoft 365 admin center, click on setup, and select Microsoft 365 Backup. Follow the prompts to configure your billing and select the regions for your backups.
  2. Configure Backup Policies: You can configure backup policies for SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange individually. Define the scope of the backup policy by selecting the sites, mailboxes, or accounts to be backed up. Watch the video above to see a full demo of how to use Microsoft 365 Backup to set up your policies.
  3. Backup Schedule: For SharePoint and OneDrive, backups are performed every 15 minutes for the first 14 days and then weekly for one year. They are then retained for one year. For Exchange, backups occur every 10 minutes and are retained for one year.

Restoring Data

  1. Initiate Restore: In the Microsoft 365 admin center, navigate to the backup section and select the data you want to restore. Choose the date and time of the backup point and decide whether to restore in place or to a new location.
  2. Review and Confirm: Review the restore settings and confirm the operation. The restoration process will begin, and you can monitor its progress in the admin center.

Watch the video above to see a full demo of how to use Microsoft 365 Backup to restore your data.

Compliance and Retention

Microsoft 365 Backup ensures compliance with data retention policies. While backups are retained for one year, retention labels and sensitivity labels applied to your data will be restored along with the data.

There may be times when you need to use eDiscovery to find documents for a legal case or something similar. Good news: With Exchange, eDiscovery can still find items even if they have been deleted out of mailboxes and only exist within the backup.

SharePoint and One Drive, however, are a little different. If the item only exists in a backup and does not exist in the live account, eDiscovery will not be able to find it. Microsoft may change this in the future.

Future Enhancements

Microsoft is continuously improving Microsoft 365 Backup. Upcoming features include roll-forward capabilities for SharePoint and OneDrive, allowing for more granular restores without overwriting newer data, and backup support for Microsoft Teams.

Conclusion

I hope this blog helped you understand how to use Microsoft 365 Backup to further protect your organization’s data. In my opinion, this is a fantastic tool to add to your Microsoft 365 toolkit. With its robust features, seamless integration, and ease of use, it provides a reliable solution for data backup and recovery.

Additional Resources

Discover gaps in your security strategy, learn about security tools available to you with Microsoft 365, uncover risky activities, and create an improvement plan unique to your business and organization with Quisitive’s Microsoft 365 Security Assessment.