Office 365 used by lot of companies today to avoid Exchange Server on-premise costs. Most of the IT Pro when calculate costs before migrate Exchange Server on-premise to Office 365 the first think is to remove backup costs.
This is wrong. Why?
Microsoft work is to maintain infrastructure and Geo redundancy of Office 365 to make sure the high availability of your data. But this is totally different from the backup.
How to keep your data safe in case of any deletion it's your work.
Unfortunately you can find lot of cases that the data can be deleted.
Some of them that i have face as IT are:
- Accidentally deleted from a user.
- Deleted by the user when left from the company.
- Delete the user mailbox that believes it's not needed anymore.
- Deleted emails from user to hide a scam or fraud
Of course Exchange Online - Office 365 it's a great tool and has some features that can avoid the above situations like Legal Hold , Deletion Policy which can use it to keep specific days emails or mailboxes after deleted.
But as IT Pro i must sure that can handle that data which i am responsible and will have the ability to restore it when someone requested even after 1 year or more.
For these reasons i decide to find Backups for Office 365 and review it to help you takes better decisions.
CloudAlly is one of the Cloud Backups that will review today.
How to Start with CloudAlly
One of the advantage of CloudAlly because it's a cloud solution you don't need any software to install in your infrastructure.
You can go in website of Cloudally and click in Free Trial to signup for a new account.
Very easy without difficulties.
CloudAlly Security
One of the most important requirement to choose a Provider or a software is the Security.
The first question to ask and i think you too is How safe are my data when decide to backup in cloud ??
After my research i found that CloudAlly has the ISO 27001 and HIPAA Compliant.
Also CloudAlly participates in the Cloud Security Alliance STAR Program.
Use OAUth for permission based access and all data is stored in Amazon S3 storage and encrypted using advanced AES-256 bit encryption algorithms. Transmitted data is encrypted and secured using SSL (HTTPS) enabled servers.
You can find more details related with the CloudAlly Security in CloudAlly Security Overview Page.
How to Configure CloudAlly before start the Backups
Now after signup with your new account as usual you will receive an email to activate the account which create.
- Login in Office365 as Administrator and select the Exchange.
- From the right side click Permissions.
- Double click in Group Discovery Management.
- In Roles click the + and Add the ApplictionImpersonation.
- Click Save.
- Add the Role ApplictionImpersonation in the Group Organization Management.
- That's it !!!! From now on you can start to backup the Office 365 mailboxes.
How to Authenticate CloudAlly with Office365
Authentication is the next step after Configure Application Impersonation
CloudAlly use OAuth between CloudAlly and Office365 for secure authentication.
I will not into technical details but i want to explain that OAuth use it for communication between sites without need to use your credentials. This is benefit for CloudAlly and for the user.
- CloudAlly has backup solutions for different Applications and Providers like GSuites, Salesforce , Dropbox and more as you can see.
- Today i will discuss only for Office 365 Exchange.
- So just click in Office 365 Exchange
- Select Use OAuth based authentication and click Authenticate in Microsoft.
- It asks for the Office 365 credentials .
- When login it appears a Page which explain the Permissions requests that must be Accept for the CloudAlly. Click Accept.
How to Backup a Mailbox
Now it's time to start Backup the Mailboxes
- Before start to take Backups let's take a look how can schedule it.
- Go down in the same Page and you can see the section Select your backup references.
- Configure the Backup frequency and time that you want to take the backup and click Save.
- Now go back in Activate your preferred Office365 Exchange Mailboxes to Activate the mailboxes for the backup.
- Select Activate All
- or choose which mailboxes you want to backup.
How to Restore a Mailbox
All it's ok with the Backup but let's see how can Restore a Mailbox or a specific Email.
- From the left side click RECOVERY
- Click in the Active Backup Accounts
- Select the Mailbox that you want and click in Arrow >
- You have to Options to Restore Via Snapshots which is the full mailbox and Via Item Search which is specific email.
- Most often scenario is to restore specific emails instead of Full Mailbox.
- So from in Via Item Search select Emails.
- Search fro the email with specific fields like Subject, From or To Address to find the email that you would like to Restore
- In my case i type test and retrieve results for emails related with the word test that have in my mailbox.
- You can see in which folder located and you can Restore the email in the mailbox or Download in your PC.
- If you click in Restore it ask you to confirm the restore request. Just click OK.
- A quick note that you have the ability to restore the email in different mailbox if you want.
- After start the restore you can see the progress.
- When finish successful you can open the mailbox and find the email.
- If you click Download you have the option to download the email as .eml or as pst.
- Select what you want and click OK.
That's it !!!
I use it as backup solution for my emails and i found it good solution to publish it.
I hope to help you in any decision related with your Office365 Backup with this Review.
I invite you to follow me on Twitter or Facebook. If you have any questions, send email at info@askme4tech.com
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