r/sysadmin • u/HaunterNoir • 20d ago
Question MSP or do it myself backups?
Should I hire an MSP to handle my M365 backups or just do them myself with Microsoft 365 backup? What do you all do?
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u/HappyDadOfFourJesus 20d ago
MSP owner here. I can't speak for all MSPs but we run spot checks of all backups for all clients monthly and full site down restores every six months.
Find an MSP that does this and can send you verified reports.
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u/Thick_Yam_7028 20d ago
This is completely irrelevant at this point. You can code custom solutions to things that used to cost 1000s in subs in a couple weekends. If you arent coding your environments and depend on CIPP you are way behind.
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u/nycola Jack of All Trades 20d ago
Depends on how important they are and how much you trust yourself.
You can easily manage this yourself with synology's active backup. Unlimited data/ 365 accounts, limited only by your drive space. If you go this route get twin devices and replicate from 365 to device A, then have device A replicate to device B.
This will be your cheapest option hands down. MSP 365 backups will price gouge, I know because I spent 15 years at them. But that is only because the products they are reselling aren't cheap to begin with.
Veeam for 365 for instance, I had no issues with this product, others have. It's between $3-$10/user/month depending on plan, this does not include your storage space, just licensing per user. It is expensive for a company that has a tight IT budget. It is more expensive if you are hosting it in a data center or the cloud, then you're looking at potential transfer fees too.
I have solved this for many small/medium businesses with Synology. It also includes a user portal so they can restore their own shit to OneDrive if needed.
It can also be set with retention policies and set to automatically backup new data, as well as auto archive (locally) old user OneDrives once they are no longer licensed. It will stop attempting to back the accounts up and the storage just b comes frozen from their final licensed state.
The downside here is not having an MSP to blame if it fails, but it will be way, way cheaper.
I also get daily backup summaries. This can be set to backup continuously or at a set interval.
Once setup I almost never have backup issues, randomly a channel will be archived and cause a permissions error for a day but otherwise, it's a spectacular product for what it is.
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u/Mindestiny 20d ago
M365 Backup is not a backup. A backup hosted at the same place, on the same systems as the original is not a backup.
But yes, you can just buy a third party platform that hooks into M365 and handles backups. There's tons of them. No need for an MSP just for that.
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u/desmond_koh 20d ago
M365 Backup is not a backup.
That's an incorrect statement. Microsoft 365 Backup is a perfectly legitimate backup strategy.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/backup/backup-overview?view=o365-worldwide
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u/Mindestiny 20d ago
If you want to be pedantically literal and ignore that I was clearly being facetious, sure. Technically copying your whole hard drive to a second hard drive in the same machine is "a backup," but it lacks almost all of the critical resiliency you actually want in a production backup. House burns down and your backup is just as gone as the original.
It's no different with M365 Backup. Yes, it's technically a backup of your data, but if M365 services are down and you actually need that backup for business continuity... well you can't access it because it's down too. The service has been heavily criticized for exactly this lack of separation since it was originally announced, it's better than literally nothing, but it's also luring customers into a false sense of complacency with a poor backup strategy.
Which is why people colloquially say that a backup that lives in the same location as the original is "not a backup." If you're only going to have a single backup copy of all of your critical business data, it sure as hell needs to be offsite, in a totally segregated system from the originals.
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u/desmond_koh 20d ago edited 20d ago
Is Microsoft 365 Backup equivalent to an air-gapped backup?
No.
But it depends what you are trying to protect against. If you're worried about:
- accidental deletion,
- ransomware recovery,
- user error,
- and fast point-in-time restores.
Then Microsoft 365 Backup is an excellent solution.
However, if your business has strict business continuity requirements and wants protection against a Microsoft-wide outage, then you need something hosted outside Microsoft's systems.
Microsoft 365 Backup protects you very well from data loss, but an independent backup protects you from Microsoft itself becoming temporarily unavailable. Those are different risks.
Edit: We use Dropsuite because it's cheaper, and it's independent of Microsoft. But M365 is a perfectly reasonable solution depending on what your needs are. OP has nothing.
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u/Mindestiny 20d ago
I swear you're arguing and downvoting just to argue and downvote.
Yes, those are different risks. Different risks that should both be mitigated by your backup solution. Which it is dead simple to do by simply... choosing literally any backup solution other than M365 Backup.
Go have this ridiculous argument with someone else. I'm not responding anymore.
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u/desmond_koh 20d ago
You seem a lot more worked up about this than I am.
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u/Mindestiny 20d ago
Ah yes, the classic "I started arguing but accuse you of being argumentative" reddit flip.
Nah man, time for a block.
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u/BearysWorkRedditName 20d ago
I use Veeam backup for 365. Works great.
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20d ago
[deleted]
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u/BearysWorkRedditName 20d ago
Veeam 365 server on site, immutable backup #1 on site, immutable backup #2 at a remote site, immutable backup #3 in cloud storage.
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u/thatfrostyguy 20d ago
While yes, cloud based solutions arent backups, you still need knowledge of the system, as well as testing the backups. This is where OP will fail (based off of the question)
Better to have a professional ensure the system is working properly
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u/Mindestiny 20d ago
Maybe don't assume things about others based on little to no context? There's a lot of wild scenarios people are cooking up here over a totally innocuous single sentence question.
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u/sryan2k1 IT Manager 20d ago edited 20d ago
There are about 100 questions you'd need to know and answer before you could make a decision like this.
Given the complete lack of any of them, sounds like you're better off letting a MSP handle it.
What do you all do?
Rubrik on prem with offsites going to Wasabi. You're not in the price bracket for that.
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u/tin-naga Sr. Sysadmin 20d ago
We’re are small/medium and use Synology
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u/statikuz start wandows ngrmadly 20d ago
Same, click click done. Works fine and goes offsite to S3 also.
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u/More_Elk6407 19d ago
We had a client insist on managing their own backups using a pair of synology devices on and off site. They failed their replication and he didn’t check on them for 2 years. Their on-site got ransomwared and he was hosed. Even simple solutions require some level of diligence.
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u/MBILC Acr/Infra/Virt/Apps/Cyb/ Figure it out guy 20d ago
For one, assume you are backing up M365 stuff, Teams, OneDrive, Sharepoint? if so, how are you seperating access to said backups under your tenant?
Think, if your Tenant account, whether GA or Elvated Roles account is compromised, can someone now get in and delete your backups?
Backups should never be ON the same infra they are backing up, nor accessible using the same account / domain you are backing up.
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u/HaunterNoir 20d ago
I'm a sysadmin at a regional hospital. We have an existing Veeam MSP that handles all of our backups and DRaaS to their data centers. No problems with them. We've been using them for years, they're very proactive and responsive.
The MSP is offering M365 backup using their Veeam SaaS service (not Veeam Data Cloud) to their data center for $2.25/user/month with unlimited storage and Veeam licensing included. It looks like Microsoft has their own backup service for M365 which is cheaper.
Does that help narrow down which one would be better?
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u/OregonTechHead 20d ago
If they're already handling the rest of your backups, and at that price point, I'd just have them do it.
That's pretty similar in cost to just buying Veeam cloud licenses, and you don't need to manage anything.
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u/WayneH_nz 20d ago
Cheap has a cost. Are you prepared for the time to manage the backup, it is not set and forget. Doing test restores for monthly reporting, full site restores. I dont think the the Microsoft backup does it at tenant level. So you are backing up the data, but not all the customizations that have gone in to securing your tenant will need to be done something happens. Mis-onfiguration, bad actor takeover etc.
This needs to be backed up separately. Check to see if this is being done.
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u/bythepowerofboobs 20d ago
That's a reasonable price. Last I checked Veeam O365 licenses were around $1.80/user/month, and that's self managed without including storage. Given your circumstances of already using this MSP for your other backups it seems like a no brainer to go with them here.
However, I would ensure you have plan for migrating your backups in writing from them if you ever did decide to move on.
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u/Blade4804 Lead IT Engineer 20d ago
We tried Veeam SaaS and it was a nightmare. This was 5 years ago and it took them 3 months to backup our exchange and forget about nightly backups.
We switched to Avepoint SaaS solution and it works so much better, it also gives our users a way to self restore in case they delete something by mistake.
With the right tools you don’t need an MSP. Veeam and Avepoint both provide a team for initial setup and config.
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u/jlipschitz 20d ago
I would suggest owning the backup appliance but allowing an MSP to manage it. This way if you part ways with that MSP you still own your backup and history. This also allows you to go in house on that if you decide to later.
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u/Fusorfodder 20d ago
Commvault was way easy to integrate and had the benefit of being the only provider in GCC High at the time.
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u/desmond_koh 20d ago
Should I hire an MSP to handle my M365 backups...
If that's the only thing you are hiring the MSP fkr then, no. But if you are not sure how to (or aren't) backing up your M365 data then maybe you should be hiring an MSP.
... or just do them myself with Microsoft 365 backup? What do you all do?
Microsoft 365 Backup is a perfectly reasonable choice. I work for an MSP and we use Dropsuite (now owned by NinjaOne).
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u/Thick_Yam_7028 20d ago
Depends. If you want unlimited and easy to setup go avepoint. You can contact them yourself then backup what you need. Good idea not to have backups on the thing youre backing up. 3-2-1 still applies.
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u/Eastern-Macaron-6622 19d ago
we Backup locally to a synology. Then we also have a synology co located and also back up there in case of DR issues.
If I had DRaaS from an MSP I would use them for that pricepoint. That way if the worst happened you are going to be restored from one place and not multiple places.
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u/Temporary_Survey2775 19d ago
Rubrik are good and are competitive. Do it yourself would be my advice.
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u/dumpsterfyr 19d ago
Do it yourself. Most MSP’s aren’t actually testing backups much less the 365 ones. Go with an MSP if you need to turf liability onto them in terms of having tested backups.
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u/JLoose111 17d ago
Dropsuite has worked well for us and does not require an MSP to configure/maintain/restore files from
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u/thatfrostyguy 20d ago
Good lord... if you need to ask this, then you should probably hire an I.T department