Cloud Backup Query

[Mr_Jiminy]

My question relates specifically to cloud‑hosted data, particularly user email and personal storage areas such as OneDrive or Google Drive.

Do you back up each user’s mailbox and personal storage — including accounts for teaching assistants?

 

 

[Cat_Jam148]

We backup our entire Microsoft 365 to an on-site NAS box. Run over the weekend.

 

All users are included - if they are on the platform, all their data is backed up.

 

Edited May 21 by Cat_Jam148

[aydee]

We use Redstor, which once you give it API Access to GOogle, will backup all User data. Drive, Gmail, Contacts, classroom etc.
I guess it depends on how many users and or data you have with data retention costs.

[Mr_Jiminy]

4 minutes ago, Cat_Jam148 said:

We backup our entire Microsoft 365 to an on-site NAS box. Run over the weekend.

 

All users are included - if they are on the platform, all their data is backed up.

 

Yes looked into this, but didn't like the lack of auditing. Essentially an admin could read any email, or open any file without any log or auditing or possibility to prevent this.

[Mr_Jiminy]

4 minutes ago, aydee said:

We use Redstor, which once you give it API Access to GOogle, will backup all User data. Drive, Gmail, Contacts, classroom etc.
I guess it depends on how many users and or data you have with data retention costs.

Thanks, so are you backing up all staff accounts or selective?

[aydee]

9 minutes ago, Mr_Jiminy said:

Thanks, so are you backing up all staff accounts or selective?

If its in our Google tennancy, its getting backed up!! Staff, Students, Peri's, Service Accounts, Email Groups all of it

I havent really looked into it too much, as We are not close to filling the quota we have space wise, so I dont even know if you can be selective or not to be honest.

We also back up our servers to it too, to have a cloud copy of the data.

Edited May 21 by aydee

[Olliedawg]

We use a Synology NAS to backup our exchange mailboxes, groups, user onedrives, sharepoint sites...

 

I admit there probably are better solutions out there, but this one works for us & it's free.

Edited May 21 by Olliedawg

[Rob_D]

We use Barracuda C2C backup for our whole 365 tenant.

[Cat_Jam148]

26 minutes ago, Mr_Jiminy said:

Yes looked into this, but didn't like the lack of auditing. Essentially an admin could read any email, or open any file without any log or auditing or possibility to prevent this.

Our Synology NAS logs each time a backup is taken, and anytime a file is accessed - which is enough for us. 

[ITGuyNW]

I backup to on prem on a basic Synology box but do also want cloud to cloud

[Jobos]

Interesting to note that the MSP here charges £225 pa for the 365 backup. Primary with less that 100 mailboxes.

[Boredguy]

We backup our entire 365 cloud data through the Barracuda C2C solution.

Works nicely overall, the interface could be faster but they have made improvements.  It also backs up your Entra info as well.

[Mr_Jiminy]

7 minutes ago, Jobos said:

Interesting to note that the MSP here charges £225 pa for the 365 backup. Primary with less that 100 mailboxes.

What backup product?

 

 

[TheHyperTechie]

We used to use a Synology box for our Google Workspace tenant, multiple domains, would backup emails, drives, shared drives, calendar. Pretty much everything. It would do a backup every night. I was in the process of then looking at something like PeaSoup to back the NAS up to the "cloud". 

 

We then migrated to Office 365, I believe the MSP who manages the tenant uses Barracuda's service.

Edited May 21 by TheHyperTechie

[Synkrox]

+1 for Synology

[Rob_D]

How much capacity do you Synology users have on your NAS? We're using about 25tb in M365 right now, and I'm guessing for a descent retention I'd need to *3 that, which is sounding like quite a lot of storage. 

[Synkrox]

We have about 15TB available on the NAS - using 8TB in 365 - our Synology backups only take up 6TB. 
You won't need 3x as it dedupes and compresses pretty well. Just enough for changes/growth. Might even get away with 1x the O365 listed amount to begin with.

[TheHyperTechie]

19 minutes ago, Rob_D said:

How much capacity do you Synology users have on your NAS? We're using about 25tb in M365 right now, and I'm guessing for a descent retention I'd need to *3 that, which is sounding like quite a lot of storage. 

We have about 3TB that is across a large primary, and a small one. I went for a 4 bay with 4 x 2TB drives. Setup using SHR, essentially raid 5. This meant I only had about 5.4TB of capacity. However the backups are incremental, and at the time we had no plans to expand. I factored it in lasting at least a few years before needing to increase storage (which it has).

Edited May 21 by TheHyperTechie

[itskdog]

We're with LGfL, so get Redstor's Total Education Bundle free in exchange for a 5 year commitment (which we were planning on doing anyway).

 

Effectively unlimited storage (normal price is based on number of pupils rather than data), so we back up all users, sites, and servers, including the desktop machine running Net2, and our InVentry machine.

[msi_school]

2 hours ago, Mr_Jiminy said:

Yes looked into this, but didn't like the lack of auditing. Essentially an admin could read any email, or open any file without any log or auditing or possibility to prevent this.

There are two different issues here I belive.

 

1. What to back up, as a simple man I would recommend backing up everything. You then don't have to justify why someone's important file that they had saved in a location that was not backup has been lost.

 

2. Auditing access. This is a harder question to answer. When I started in IT the sysadmin had access to everything and it was just accepted that this was the way it was. We also smoked in the office so a lot has changed since then. You have to risk assess this against a more expensive back up solution or a two person rule for accessing the device.

[Jobos]

On 21/05/2026 at 10:20, Mr_Jiminy said:

What backup product?

 

 

 

Synology. It was setup before I took over from the MSP and was one of the services that has been kept.