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What Microsoft 365 data should your backup cover?
Microsoft 365 Backup lets an organization protect all or selected SharePoint sites, OneDrive accounts, and Exchange mailboxes in its tenant. The choice is not simply whether to back up a workload: decide which sites, accounts, and mailboxes would be costly or difficult to recreate, and make sure their owners and recovery requirements are documented.
| Workload or content | What to include | Coverage detail |
|---|---|---|
| Exchange Online | Business mailboxes and their mail, calendar, contacts, and task items | Exchange is a distinct backup workload in Microsoft 365 Backup. |
| SharePoint Online | Team and department sites, document libraries, lists, and other collaboration content | Teams channel files are stored in SharePoint. They are covered only if the site containing them is included in the SharePoint backup policy. |
| OneDrive for Business | User accounts with working files, particularly files not copied into a controlled SharePoint site or records repository | OneDrive is a separate workload; select the accounts to protect through its policy. |
| Teams chats and other Teams-server content | Identify whether this content is needed for business, legal, or compliance recovery | Microsoft says, “Team chats or any other content stored on Teams servers are not currently protected.” Do not assume that protecting SharePoint channel files also protects chat content. |
Which data should you prioritize?
Start with the consequences of losing or restoring data, rather than enabling coverage indiscriminately. A practical impact review should identify the records and collaboration spaces that support revenue, obligations, essential operations, or regulated work.
- Customer and contract records: Identify the SharePoint sites, libraries, mailboxes, or OneDrive accounts that hold the authoritative working copies.
- Finance and HR documents: Include the relevant repositories and mailboxes, and align backup decisions with the organization’s retention and legal-hold requirements.
- Operational SharePoint sites: Prioritize sites teams rely on to run services, manage projects, or coordinate departments.
- Executive and regulated mailboxes: Assess business impact and applicable recovery obligations before selecting mailboxes.
- Individual OneDrive files: Give particular attention to files that are not also held in a managed SharePoint or records system.
For each selected site, mailbox, and account, record its business owner and the acceptable recovery time and recovery point. Those targets help distinguish genuinely critical data from content that can be recreated or recovered through ordinary collaboration processes.
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How Microsoft 365 Backup recovery differs by workload
Microsoft documents different recovery-point behavior for Exchange than for SharePoint and OneDrive. The following figures are from Microsoft’s current product documentation and FAQ; they describe Microsoft 365 Backup, not every native Microsoft recovery feature.
| Workload | Documented recovery points or retention | Qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Exchange Online | 10-minute recovery points for the prior year; a 10-minute recovery point objective | Microsoft’s FAQ describes the RPO as approximate for an Exchange destruction event. The product documentation describes Exchange separately from SharePoint and OneDrive. |
| SharePoint Online and OneDrive | Restore points every 10 minutes for 14 days, then weekly through 365 days | This cadence is the one Microsoft documents for these two workloads. |
| Backups in Microsoft 365 Backup | One-year retention | Microsoft says retention is measured from an item change or snapshot and is controlled within the Backup tool. |
Are recycle bins, version history, and Files Restore enough?
They can be useful for recovering from short-window problems, but they are not interchangeable with an explicit backup policy. Microsoft’s resiliency documentation gives SharePoint deleted content a total of 93 days across recycle-bin stages from the date of deletion. Files Restore can return a SharePoint or OneDrive document library to a point in the prior 30 days, subject to version history. These bounded recovery paths may help with accidental deletion, corruption, or ransomware, but depend on the available configuration and recovery window.
A separate backup policy is warranted when the organization needs longer retention, recovery controls independent of ordinary service settings, protection after account or site changes, or a documented restore process. Microsoft Learn also states that organizations remain the owners of data they put in SharePoint and OneDrive for Microsoft 365; data ownership makes it important to decide how the organization will protect and recover that data.
How to turn the data inventory into a backup policy
- Inventory important data: Map business records and working files to the Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint sites, and OneDrive accounts that contain them. Include SharePoint sites used by Teams channels.
- Set recovery requirements: For each high-impact area, name an owner and record legal holds, regulatory retention, recovery-time objectives, recovery-point objectives, and restore-testing requirements.
- Select the workloads and scope: Microsoft 365 Backup uses separate policies for SharePoint, Exchange, and OneDrive. Protect all three when broad coverage is needed, or select critical sites, mailboxes, and accounts based on the impact review.
- Document the Teams exception: Decide how Teams chats and other Teams-server content will be handled. Microsoft 365 Backup does not currently protect that content; evaluate a service with Teams-chat coverage if those records must be backed up.
- Test recovery: Define who can request and perform restores, what successful recovery means for each workload, and how often the organization will test the documented process.
What to compare if you need more than Microsoft 365 Backup
When assessing another backup service, compare capabilities against the gaps and requirements in your inventory rather than relying on the word “backup” alone.
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- Workload coverage: Check whether Teams chats are covered, as well as Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive.
- Recovery options: Compare restore granularity, recovery-point frequency, retention duration, and the ability to recover after a user or site is deleted.
- Control and portability: Review geographic data residency, security and compliance controls, export capability, and whether backup administration is isolated from production retention policies.
- Cost: Compare total cost per protected gigabyte using your actual storage scope and retention needs. Microsoft listed Microsoft 365 Backup storage at $0.15 per GB per month as of July 31, 2024; that is a dated price, not a current quote, and should be checked against current Microsoft pricing before budgeting.
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
