Comparison of backup solutions for Microsoft 365 data

Depending on the services that are enabled for the customer tenant, the following backup solutions are available:

• Microsoft 365 Business – Backup
• Direct Backup to Microsoft 365 Backup Storage

• Agent for Office 365 (locally installed agent)

  For tenants in Compliance mode, only the locally installed agent is available. These tenants can back up only Microsoft 365 mailboxes. They cannot use the extended functionality provided by the cloud agent.

Azure Information Protection (AIP) is supported with all solutions.

The following table summarizes the functionality of the backup solutions.

Solution	Microsoft 365 Business – Backup	Direct Backup to Microsoft 365 Backup Storage	Agent for Office 365
Agent type	Cloud agent The cloud agent provides extended backup functionality, which is directly accessible in the Cyber Protect console No installation is required	Cloud agent The cloud agent provides extended backup functionality, which is directly accessible in the Cyber Protect console No installation is required	Local agent The locally installed agent only provides backup of Exchange online mailboxes The agent must be installed on a Windows machine that is connected to the Internet
Data items that can be backed up	Exchange Online: user mailboxes and shared mailboxes (including mailboxes of users on a Kiosk plan and mailboxes on litigation hold) group mailboxes public folders OneDrive: user files and folders SharePoint Online: classic communication sites modern team sites individual data items Microsoft 365 Teams: entire teams team channels channel files team mailboxes files and email messages in team mailboxes meetings team sites OneNote notebooks: as part of OneDrive, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft 365 Teams backups	Exchange Online: user mailboxes OneDrive: user files and folders SharePoint Online: classic communication sites modern team sites	Exchange Online: user mailboxes and shared mailboxes (including mailboxes of users on a Kiosk plan and mailboxes on litigation hold)
Backup of archive mailboxes (In-Place Archive)	Yes	Yes	No
Backup schedule	Up to six times per day*	Every 10 minutes	User-defined
Backup retention	Flexible – by date, number of backups, or unlimited	Fixed For mailboxes – one year of frequent backups For OneDrive accounts and SharePoint sites – one year, with trailing two weeks of frequent backups, and weekly backups for the rest of the period	Flexible – by date, number of backups, or unlimited
Backup locations	Cloud storage (including partner-hosted storage)	Microsoft 365 Backup Storage	Cloud storage, local folder, network folder
Backup resiliency	Provided as standard – cloud storage data centers are not co-located with any Microsoft data centers	Automatic replication to other storage containers within the Microsoft network	No
Automatic protection of new Microsoft 365 users, groups, sites, and teams	Yes, by applying a protection plan to the All users, All groups, All sites, All teams groups	Yes, by applying a protection plan to the All users and All groups, and All sites	No
Protecting more than one Microsoft 365 organization	Yes	Yes	No
Granular recovery	Yes	No	Yes
Recovery to another user in the same Microsoft 365 organization within the same backup solution	Yes	No	Yes
Recovery to another Microsoft 365 organization in the same tenant, within the same backup solution	Yes	No	No
Recovery to an on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server	No	No	No
Maximum number of items that can be backed up without performance degradation	Up to 50,000 protected workloads per company**	N/A	When backing up to the cloud storage: 5,000 mailboxes per company When backing up to other destinations: 2,000 mailboxes per protection plan (no limitation for number of mailboxes per company)
Maximum number of manual backup runs	10 manual runs during an hour	N/A	Unlimited
Maximum number of simultaneous recovery operations	10 operations, including Google Workspace recovery operations	N/A	Unlimited
Performance	Typical speeds for cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery	Faster backup and recovery, no data throttling	Typical speeds for backup and recovery

* With the standard included features, the default option is Once a day. With the Advanced Backup pack, the default option is Twice a day. You can schedule up to six backups per day. The backups start at approximate intervals that depend on the current load of the cloud agent, which serves multiple customers in a data center. This ensures an even load during the day and an equal quality of service for all customers.

** The maximum number of workloads depends on the workload type, as follows: 50,000 Exchange mailboxes or 10,000 teams or 10,000 SharePoint sites or 5,000 OneDrive accounts.

To calculate the supported combinations, use the following formula:

10 mailboxes = 2 teams = 2 sites = 1 OneDrive account

For example:

• 50,000 mailboxes
• 40,000 mailboxes and 1,000 OneDrive accounts
• 40,000 mailboxes and 2,000 sites
• 40,000 mailboxes and 2,000 teams
• 30,000 mailboxes, 1,000 OneDrive accounts, 1,000 sites, and 1,000 teams
• 30,000 mailboxes, 2,000 sites, and 2,000 teams

We recommend that you back up the workloads sequentially and in the following order:

1. Mailboxes
2. OneDrive accounts
3. Teams
4. SharePoint sites

The first full backup might take several days, depending on the number of protected items and their size. Do not start the next backup until the previous one is complete.

Limitations

• All users with a mailbox or OneDrive account are shown in the Cyber Protect console, including users without a Microsoft 365 license and users who are blocked from signing in to the Microsoft 365 services.
• A mailbox backup includes only folders visible to users. The Recoverable items folder and its subfolders (Deletions, Versions, Purges, Audits, DiscoveryHold, Calendar Logging) are not included in a mailbox backup.
• Automatic creation of users, public folders, groups, or sites during a recovery is not possible. For example, if you want to recover a deleted SharePoint Online site, first create a new site manually, and then specify it as the target site during a recovery.
• You cannot simultaneously recover items from different recovering points, even though you can select such items from the search results.
• During a backup, any sensitivity labels that are applied to the content will be preserved. Therefore, sensitive content might not be shown if it is recovered to a non-original location and its user has different access permissions.
• [For Microsoft 365 Business – Backup] You can apply only one individual backup plan to a workload.
• [For Microsoft 365 Business – Backup] When an individual backup plan and a group backup plan are applied to the same workload, the settings in the individual plan take precedence.
• [For Direct Backup to Microsoft 365 Backup Storage] You can create and apply one backup plan per type of data (Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint sites, OneDrive accounts).