Do you backup your GAfE data?

[fiza]

Does anyone use online services such as Spanning or Backupify or any other method to backup your Google Apps for Education data? Edited March 17, 2016 by fiza

[howartp]

We looked at both when we started with GAFE.

 

Circa £25k off top of my head...

 

Our head isn't bothered about backing up GAFE anyway, it was me pushing us to do it as a necessity, but then decided to wait for Google Vault which was supposedly (and possibly has) come along for Edu customers to allow retrieval of deleted GAFE docs (not just email retention etc as it started off at).

 

We actually do neither and have only once in 18 months lost a file that we couldn't retrieve - a bug with shared users deleting a shared users file from a moved-folder or something weird - neither the owner nor the deleter could see the file in their bin.

 

I can get you a contact at Spanning if you want one.

 

Peter

[fiza]

 

Circa £25k off top of my head...

 

I can get you a contact at Spanning if you want one.

 

Peter

 

£25k!!! wow.

 

Its the same situation here. I advised that we should backup but at that price I think we will live with the fact that the odd file may get lost.

[SpaceInvader83]

I looked at this, backupify seemed to tick all the boxes, ,again not cheap! https://www.backupify.com/pricing/google-apps

[CyberNerd]

We actually do neither and have only once in 18 months lost a file that we couldn't retrieve - a bug with shared users deleting a shared users file from a moved-folder or something weird - neither the owner nor the deleter could see the file in their bin.

 

 

If you see that again; just go to the user and "restore data" as there is a 30day snapshot of files.

[theeggmaster]

When we moved to GAfE back in 2012, I was looking at solutions as Google Vault wasn't available, the 30 day snapshot wasn't available and it didn't have unlimited storage. The most cost-effective solution I found was this one from workflow.ae.

However, once they announced unlimited online storage I knew that I'd struggle to provide enough useful offline storage longer term.

[rdk]

We use Spanning at $US20 per user, but we only back up staff/faculty/shared accounts, not students.

[mbuk70]

Last time I looked at spanning their pricing model was based on FTS count, similar to Microsoft, think I was given a quote for around £1300 for the whole Academy, including pupils. Might have changed now though.

[flyinghaggis]

We've been looking at options for changing our GAFE backup strategy. Currently we backup up all of the pupil and staff data using Backupify but the costs are starting to spiral since we're unable to effectively quota users. The per user options are all looking like they'd work out too expensive unless we revert to only backing up staff accounts.

 

Are there any cheaper options out there worth considering?

[jamesleonard]

FlyingHaggis--

 

As of a couple of weeks ago, Google Vault now supports Drive retention, holds, and search/export. More info here: https://support.google.com/vault/answer/6127699?hl=en&ref_topic=2739742

[flyinghaggis]

That's another question as to whether we can safely ditch backup entirely and go with just Google's own built in offerings like Vault.

 

I kind of feel apprehensive about not having a more traditional backup solution in place for data but with Google offering unlimited storage to education and no ability to implement any kind of quotas we've effectively written a blank cheque when it comes to paying for cloud data backup by the gigabyte!

[FN-GM]

we can safely ditch backup entirely and go with just Google's own built in offerings like Vault.

 

Just wondering why please?

[Arthur]

I kind of feel apprehensive about not having a more traditional backup solution in place for data but with Google offering unlimited storage to education and no ability to implement any kind of quotas we've effectively written a blank cheque when it comes to paying for cloud data backup by the gigabyte!

You could use rclone to do a cloud-to-cloud backup of important data stored on Google Drive. It can do it from a Google Drive on one G Suite domain to another or Google Drive to OneDrive. e.g.

 

rclone --transfers=32 --no-traverse --ignore-existing --no-check-certificate --drive-chunk=256M copy [color="#FF0000"]gdrvA[/color]:/[color="#4B0082"]Stuff[/color] [color="#FF0000"]gdrvB[/color]:/[color="#4B0082"]BackupOfStuff[/color]

 

gdrvA and B and the names of the remote locations you setup when you run rclone config. The folder names are whatever the folders are called on your Google Drives.

 

Best of all this won't cost any money.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Arthur

[howartp]

We've been looking at options for changing our GAFE backup strategy. Currently we backup up all of the pupil and staff data using Backupify but the costs are starting to spiral since we're unable to effectively quota users. The per user options are all looking like they'd work out too expensive unless we revert to only backing up staff accounts.

 

Are there any cheaper options out there worth considering?

 

Our Backupify quote is per-user; $15 per user off top of my head?

[flyinghaggis]

Just wondering why please?

Cost , pure and simple money saving I think the issue is that after moving to Google Apps Cloud backup is rapidly becoming on of our bigger expenses and it's in addition to our existing onsite backups. I personally hadn't anticipated the costs for backing up several terabytes of cloud data being anything like as high as they are based on what we pay for onsite backups.

 

Our Backupify quote is per-user; $15 per user off top of my head?

 

If we backup pupil accounts that takes us to around £30,000 per year which is substantially more than we're paying just now. And the bursar is already unhappy with the amount we're currently paying!

 

Has anyone looked at backing up GAFE to Amazon glacier as we very rarely restore data so I'm thinking something like that could work out better?

Edited March 29, 2017 by flyinghaggis

[FN-GM]

Cost , pure and simple money saving I think the issue is that after moving to Google Apps Cloud backup is rapidly becoming on of our bigger expenses and it's in addition to our existing onsite backups. I personally hadn't anticipated the costs for backing up several terabytes of cloud data being anything like as high as they are based on what we pay for onsite storage.

 

I was asking more why you need to do the additional backup?

[howartp]

Our Backupify quote is per-user; $15 per user off top of my head?

 

Just looked at my notes - it's per staff member - students included free.

 

Peter

[flyinghaggis]

I was asking more why you need to do the additional backup?

 

Isn't Google Vault just a data retention facility or does it actually let you recover documents/emails which users have accidentally deleted? I always understood Vault was more of a data archiving/retention/legal hold facility than an actual backup solution as such?

 

Perhaps I've misunderstood how it works? I'd be happy to be wrong if Google Vault does actually offer a viable alternative to Backupify/Spanning/etc!

Edited March 29, 2017 by flyinghaggis

[FN-GM]

Isn't Google Vault just a data retention facility or does it actually let you recover documents/emails which users have accidentally deleted? I always understood Vault was more of a data archiving/retention/legal hold facility than an actual backup solution as such?

 

Perhaps I've misunderstood how it works?

 

You can still get deleted items.

 

You can also recover deleted items from the users profile in the admin console. See attached.

[flyinghaggis]

You can still get deleted items.

 

You can also recover deleted items from the users profile in the admin console. See attached.

 

Thanks for the info. I'll need to try this out. I'd been told by our Google Apps partner that Vault wasn't a viable backup solution but they obviously have a vested interest in selling us another 3rd party solution so I shouldn't take their response as gospel.......!

 

In fact the last time we looked at Vault I don't think it even supported Google Drive so wasn't an option at the time.

Edited March 29, 2017 by flyinghaggis

[FN-GM]

Thanks for the info. I'll need to try this out. I'd been told by our Google Apps partner that Vault wasn't a viable backup solution but they obviously have a vested interest in selling us another 3rd party solution so I shouldn't take their response as gospel.......!

 

In fact the last time we looked at Vault I don't think it even supported Google Drive so wasn't an option at the time.

 

That will let you restore gmail and drive data.

[flyinghaggis]

I've found a chart on Spanning's website comparing Google Vault with Spanning for anyone who'd find it helpful.

 

 

On first impressions I think we're going to ditch the third party solution and just go with Google Vault given it's provided free to education. The extra features they offer don't really seem to add much functionality for the (substantial) extra cost from what I've seen of Vault so far. Especially as it now supports Google Drive.

Edited March 29, 2017 by flyinghaggis

[FN-GM]

I've found a chart on Spanning's website comparing Google Vault with Spanning for anyone who'd find it helpful.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]42456[/ATTACH]

 

On first impressions I think we're going to ditch the third party solution and just go with Google Vault given it's provided free to education. The extra features they offer don't really seem to add much functionality for the (substantial) extra cost from what I've seen of Vault so far. Especially as it now supports Google Drive.

 

I had looked at it myself. Vault is fiddly yes. But the restore is quite good. You can just restore all the deleted items on a specific date and let the user deal with it.

 

Not tried this but could you put a permanent hold on Drive? This will stop them from emptying deleted items and they can restore things themselves.

[flyinghaggis]

Not tried this but could you put a permanent hold on Drive? This will stop them from emptying deleted items and they can restore things themselves.

 

I'm not sure exactly how that would work. I'm going to sit down and have a play with it just to make sure there aren't any gotchas.

 

One thing I did notice is that versioning only appears to be supported with Google documents. To me this possibly implied if you uploaded a Word document and then re-uploaded an updated version with the same file name (or edited the existing Word Doc) you'd never be able to recover the original? Or would it recognise the file as being different even though the name was identical?

 

Something else to test I think

 

 

 

Export point-in-time Google Drive files

 

Vault only searches the latest version of a file. However, you can now add a version date to your search to view and export Google files as they existed on that date. Versioning is supported in most Google file types:

 

Docs

Slides

Sheets

Drawings

Versioning isn't supported in Google Forms, Apps Script, or any non-Google file type.

Edited March 29, 2017 by flyinghaggis

[PotNoodleTech]

Subscribing to this as looking into this too now we use google quite a lot.