Unitrends and Office365
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Again, I'm not saying that user controlled restores or access to more granular restores are bad. I'm saying that there is no grey area here and claims that there is no backup are ridiculous and obviously will create situations where people misuse terms and that's what leads to big gaps in protections.
Bottom line is you cannot redefine things, you will always be the one that loses when you do that. Words have meaning, that's their purpose. The problem here is that there are backups, but that isn't what is desired. But everyone hopes to push some blame onto Microsoft for that oversight, but it's not their problem. They have backups.
It's a semantic game of trying to redefine what words mean to suit our desires. Remember, nothing is more important in IT than semantics. Good semantics would make it obvious that "are there backups" isn't enough for any serious conversation around data protection. Data protection is a complex thing in all scenarios. No amount of desire for that not to be the case can make that change.
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@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
Granted, perhaps they should be required to ask more than simply - is there a backup. Instead they should perhaps ask - what is the restore time in the case of cryptoware? What is the recover point (in time) options?
Yes, same as you would have to do in any other scenario. Going to this one particular SaaS application doesn't change the rules of the universe and excuse skipping those things that you could never skip anywhere else.
OK sure, I'll grant you that - but the ultimate end user (me the IT person managing this system) is - can I restore when something bad happens on my side - and the answer is NO - I can not. I really don't care if MS can recover when they have a server failure (OK really I do, but frankly that's more of the platform side of things, and less about my actual data). I, and Willard and the rest, care about our ability to recover when a user completely trashes every thing they have access to. This is all almost any of use have EVER cared about.
There is a whole new paradigm with these hosted solutions. In the past, when we managed both the hardware/OS and the data, we had full solid backups plans covering all of this. In the SMB space this is very typically a singular solution for all of it. Now, now we have break from this type of thinking. Which is fine, but does require education/reminding/updating.. whatever you want to call it.
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When I worked in financial services and backups were a legal mandate, this stuff was extra clear. IT took backups, once a day. But end users wanted to create and delete files on an hourly basis. Those files would never get backed up. The servers were backed up, every day, and retained for many years. But loads of data was lost because it was being deleted before ever being backed up.
Even in a case like a Fortune 100 with big time backup teams and oversight, what a "backup" is is too convoluted to ever be simplified to "is there a backup."
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@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
OK sure, I'll grant you that - but the ultimate end user (me the IT person managing this system) is - can I restore when something bad happens on my side - and the answer is NO - I can not.
Is it? Because if something REALLY bad happens, you can. So I see the answer as yes. Quite clearly.
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@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
So bottom line, your end users don't have backups. Your business doesn't have backups. Only IT has backups by your definition.
Is that not the department that should handle managing backups?
Yes, but you defined access to backups by you, the end user as what makes something a backup, not to the IT department, which is Microsoft in this case.
LOL - I still consider myself an IT department in this case, and clearly I don't have access to those backups.
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@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
So bottom line, your end users don't have backups. Your business doesn't have backups. Only IT has backups by your definition.
Is that not the department that should handle managing backups?
Yes, but you defined access to backups by you, the end user as what makes something a backup, not to the IT department, which is Microsoft in this case.
LOL - I still consider myself an IT department in this case, and clearly I don't have access to those backups.
He doesn't have access to the backups made by Microsoft.
Edit: I am also acting as an IT Department for this discussion, not just an end-user.
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@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
I really don't care if MS can recover when they have a server failure (OK really I do, but frankly that's more of the platform side of things, and less about my actual data). I, and Willard and the rest, care about our ability to recover when a user completely trashes every thing they have access to. This is all almost any of use have EVER cared about.
Then it should be obviously that even using the term backup at all should be avoided because that alone is not even slightly what you are interested in. You need to define your requirement. Do you need copies of data taken every day, hour, real time as each email comes in? How will changes be stored? How will data be retrieved?
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@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
OK sure, I'll grant you that - but the ultimate end user (me the IT person managing this system) is - can I restore when something bad happens on my side - and the answer is NO - I can not.
Is it? Because if something REALLY bad happens, you can. So I see the answer as yes. Quite clearly.
Only if one very specific bad thing happens - the server has a failure of some kind. Not the much more worrisome and likely situation where malware wipes your data out. As you said, MS would just say No, you can't get a backup in that case, it's not our issue.
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@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
So bottom line, your end users don't have backups. Your business doesn't have backups. Only IT has backups by your definition.
Is that not the department that should handle managing backups?
Yes, but you defined access to backups by you, the end user as what makes something a backup, not to the IT department, which is Microsoft in this case.
LOL - I still consider myself an IT department in this case, and clearly I don't have access to those backups.
He doesn't have access to the backups made by Microsoft.
End uses never do. Again, if you keep repeating this, I want you to go to the CEO where you are and pronounce that you don't take backups because end users don't control them.
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@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
OK sure, I'll grant you that - but the ultimate end user (me the IT person managing this system) is - can I restore when something bad happens on my side - and the answer is NO - I can not.
Is it? Because if something REALLY bad happens, you can. So I see the answer as yes. Quite clearly.
Only if one very specific bad thing happens - the server has a failure of some kind. Not the much more worrisome and likely situation where malware wipes your data out. As you said, MS would just say No, you can't get a backup in that case, it's not our issue.
Sure, and as long as one scenario exists by which backups are used for restores, we have solid unquestionable proof that the require of having backups is met.
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@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
So bottom line, your end users don't have backups. Your business doesn't have backups. Only IT has backups by your definition.
Is that not the department that should handle managing backups?
Yes, but you defined access to backups by you, the end user as what makes something a backup, not to the IT department, which is Microsoft in this case.
LOL - I still consider myself an IT department in this case, and clearly I don't have access to those backups.
He doesn't have access to the backups made by Microsoft.
End uses never do. Again, if you keep repeating this, I want you to go to the CEO where you are and pronounce that you don't take backups because end users don't control them.
I'm not speaking for the end-user. I am speaking as IT Personnel in charge of making backups and restoring files when it is needed.
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@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
So bottom line, your end users don't have backups. Your business doesn't have backups. Only IT has backups by your definition.
Is that not the department that should handle managing backups?
Yes, but you defined access to backups by you, the end user as what makes something a backup, not to the IT department, which is Microsoft in this case.
LOL - I still consider myself an IT department in this case, and clearly I don't have access to those backups.
He doesn't have access to the backups made by Microsoft.
Edit: I am also acting as an IT Department for this discussion, not just an end-user.
How? To MS you are only ever an end user. If you are an MS employee then you would have access to do restores as you saw fit, obviously.
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@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
So bottom line, your end users don't have backups. Your business doesn't have backups. Only IT has backups by your definition.
Is that not the department that should handle managing backups?
Yes, but you defined access to backups by you, the end user as what makes something a backup, not to the IT department, which is Microsoft in this case.
LOL - I still consider myself an IT department in this case, and clearly I don't have access to those backups.
He doesn't have access to the backups made by Microsoft.
End uses never do. Again, if you keep repeating this, I want you to go to the CEO where you are and pronounce that you don't take backups because end users don't control them.
I'm not speaking for the end-user. I am speaking as IT Personnel in charge of making backups and restoring files when it is needed.
That IS the end user. You ONLY are an end user when SaaS is concerned.
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@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
@dafyre said in Unitrends and Office365:
@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
So bottom line, your end users don't have backups. Your business doesn't have backups. Only IT has backups by your definition.
Is that not the department that should handle managing backups?
Yes, but you defined access to backups by you, the end user as what makes something a backup, not to the IT department, which is Microsoft in this case.
LOL - I still consider myself an IT department in this case, and clearly I don't have access to those backups.
You can call yourself that, but it doesn't change the fact that you are the customer, not IT.
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@scottalanmiller said in Unitrends and Office365:
When I worked in financial services and backups were a legal mandate, this stuff was extra clear. IT took backups, once a day. But end users wanted to create and delete files on an hourly basis. Those files would never get backed up. The servers were backed up, every day, and retained for many years. But loads of data was lost because it was being deleted before ever being backed up.
Even in a case like a Fortune 100 with big time backup teams and oversight, what a "backup" is is too convoluted to ever be simplified to "is there a backup."
/sigh - Yes Scott - I thought I already capitulated to that?
But you, knowing what you know about human nature, shouldn't rest on your high horse and simply assume that that question is ever a simple as that, and neither should we, as IT pros.
I can hear you saying now, "for me to assume this person doesn't know what they are asking should be considered insulting to them," And perhaps it will be to some, but asking a question like - what is your RPO, RTO, then realizing that in all likeliness - plain jane daily backups aren't what someone wants, well - I'm guessing in the long run more people would be happy with the fact that you asked these follow up questions.
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IT is always who controls backups. So if you say "but I don't control the backups" then guess what, you just announced that you aren't IT. It's that simple. And IT often denies end users what they want. MS is a very normal IT department here. And end users often fail to ask for specifically what they want, and it is a problem because IT generally only delivers exactly what is requested because they don't have unlimited time or funds to overbuild solutions to meet what they would guess are the intended desires of those requesting things.
In the IT case with Office 365, IT (which is MS) makes sure that there are backups and that MS will not lose your data. If YOU lose your data, that's not on them. Is that unfortunate and make you have to rethink about to address email? Yes, perhaps. But lots of companies don't care about email in that way. Almost none, in fact. I can't think of anyplace I've ever worked, IT or not, that provided individual email restores as an option from IT. Can it be done? Of course. Is it a normal thing to provide? Not really.
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Also, there is also a means for restoring things that a user has deleted:
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Email is so something in regards to O365 I don't give a shit about!
I care infinitely more about Sharepoint and ODfB data.
And what you're telling me is that everyone needs to completely dump the discussion of backups - and instead move to the discussion of data continuity. Period. Don't EVERY talk about backups... end users don't give a crap about that.. End users only care about data continuity.
MS in O365 only provides data continuity probably at the 24 hour mark, and only when their own systems are the reason for the loss. Outside of that, it's completely on you, the end user in this case, as Scott has called us, to provide our own data continuity solution.
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We need a new thread to ask the same question that Willard has been asking for a year or more.
Scott - Should companies that are buying O365 services backup their O365 instances?
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@Dashrender said in Unitrends and Office365:
I can hear you saying now, "for me to assume this person doesn't know what they are asking should be considered insulting to them," And perhaps it will be to some, but asking a question like - what is your RPO, RTO, then realizing that in all likeliness - plain jane daily backups aren't what someone wants, well - I'm guessing in the long run more people would be happy with the fact that you asked these follow up questions.
Take that part of it. Let me break down my thinking here, hopefully it will make sense.
- Is asking for "backups" when something more specific is needed wrong? Yes, it is a mistake. This we know, no question.
- Is Microsoft or any IT department at fault for someone asking the wrong question? No, not in the least.
- Does trying to argue new semantic meanings of backup have any possibility of changing the word in the language? No, it does not.
Take these three things together and then ask... so why the arguing? We know that O365 as backups, no question, none. We know that the wrong thing was asked and that "are there backups" isn't what is desired. And we know that "arguing over the meaning of backups can't fix the core problem."
So then two things...
- Why is everyone so adamant that there aren't backups when there are?
- Doing this, trying to define backup as something it is not, has nothing except risk to it. It makes people feel that they can continue to do this, and that just increases risk of failure. The only thing we can do here to improve as individuals and as IT Pros is realize the mistake in the use of the term and look for ways to clarify in the future when discussing this issue. Any attempt at excusing the misuse of the term backup will only encourage the human brain to not learn, to not fix the mistake and repeat it because "it wasn't a mistake to be fixed."
Condescension is good to worry about, but doesn't play in here I don't think. This is more basic than that, there is only one way to look at this that has any value, all other ways of viewing it lead to repetition of the problem again.
