3-2-1 –Go? Not so quick, this time

For years, 3-2-1 was the standard for data back-up.  Based on photographer Peter Krogh’s process for reducing the likelihood of losing his work, the IT community adopted the approach.  For IT, the 3-2-1  rule means that you keep:

• 3 copies of your data (and operating systems + permissions and protocols), on
• 2 different types of media, with
• 1 copy stored off site in case of fire, theft or Mother Nature’s wrath). I would enhance this by specifying, an “air gapped copy”.

Although still a good basic way to mitigate against single points of failure, and to provide redundancies to ensure data availability and the safety of critical information, a daily full backup is no longer sufficient for many organisations.

Instead, using incremental backups, or differential backups may be more effective – especially for financial institutions, healthcare and retail and/or organisations where data is constantly changing, Continues Data Protection (CDP) may be a better option. It can also prove invaluable in a disaster recovery situation.

The enhanced – and often significant – storage and performance benefits do require closer management and data consistency and accessibility. For this reason, IT departments implementing such a process may wish to consider hiring a specialized third-party company to manage the backup.

With over 96% of North American organisations using the cloud in some manner, cloud-based backups can simplify did protection, as well as improving its security and resilience. Some of the benefits of cloud backups include:

• Instant availability – No need to retrieve physical storage media, to begin the process.
• Data redundancy – Leading cloud providers offer multiple availability zones, guaranteeing uninterrupted data access even if one data center experiences downtime.
• Immutability: By placing backups in a WORM (Right Once, Read Many) state, you can make your backups immutable, which is crucial for maintaining data integrity, ensuring compliance, and safeguarding against tampering, accident alterations and even, potential data breaches.

It is also advisable to use a supplementary backup software solution, such as Veeam.

Why should I worry about this? I use Microsoft 365 Backup

Good question. Before answering it, however, a little background:

Last summer, Microsoft soft-launched its Microsoft 365 Backup, with general availability occurring a few months ago. According to Microsoft, the Microsoft 365 Backup will…

1. Backup all or select SharePoint sites, OneDrive accounts, and Exchange mailboxes in your tenant.
2. Restore OneDrive accounts, SharePoint sites, and mailbox items to a prior point in time for your entire tenant.
3. Search or filter content in your backups using key metadata such as site names, owners, subject, creation/modification dates, and event types restore point date ranges

The solution promises recovery speeds +20 times faster than traditional backup architecture, with the advantage that “your data is kept in its native format, encrypted, geographically distributed, and secured within Microsoft 365.”

That being said, Microsoft goes on to discuss the benefits of marrying Microsoft 365 Backup with partner applications. One these partners is Veeam, which is also partner of ours. More on that in a moment, but first let us answer the original question: Why be concerned about extra protection when I use Microsoft 365 Backup?

Microsoft 365 Backup, although a great tool, has limitations

The limitations are in terms of backup frequency and retention times.

Frequency: Although backup happens every 10 minutes for emails through Exchange Online, snapshots of your data are taken only once every 12 hours for OneDrive and SharePoint.

Retention: Backups are only retained for 14 days on OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange. This means that if something important gets deleted, but is not noticed for couple of weeks because of any number of reasons, you may not be able to recover the data. A greater concern, however, is that Ransomware and other threat vectors can lurk for longer than a fortnight before attacking.

This retention time frame needs to be considered against your industry’s compliance policies, as well as any regulatory requirements (e.g. information needed for tax returns, etc.).

Recovery: You will need to get help from Microsoft support to do a full restore, and might lose recent changes because Microsoft 365 Backup does not allow for granular recovery of individual files.

This is where it makes sense to use a third party application in tandem with Microsoft 365 Backup. As mentioned, we like Veeam – as do +21 million users around the world. One of the many reasons for this is that it delivers a single solution for cloud, virtual, physical, SaaS and Kubernetes – and retention and frequencies can be adjusted.

The 3-2-1 rule becomes a 3-2-1-1-0 Rule with Veeam

The following approach taken from Veeam’s February 5, 2024 blog post:

Veeam can configure numerous combinations following the 3-2-1 Rule. This versatility is evident in the following implementations, each contributing to adherence to this guideline:

• Backups on disk (DAS, SAN, NAS, and appliances)
• Backups on tape
• Backups on removable storage
• Storage snapshots (caution on separate media from production)
• Backups in object storage such as in the public cloud with the Scale-out Backup Repository’s capacity tier
• Backups in cold archive storage in the public cloud with the Scale-out Backup Repository’s archive tier
• Backups hosted or managed by a service provider, including Veeam Cloud Connect
• Replication to another host or site with Veeam replication
• Backup copy jobs to another storage location

The Veeam difference is that we have added an extra 1 and 0 at the end, helping ensure recovery with the many types of incidents that can occur. This upgraded rule gives incredible versatility by going the extra mile.

3-2-1-1-0:

• Three Copies of Data: Ensure that you have three copies of your data, adhering to the traditional aspect of the rule.
• Two Different Media Types: Maintain data redundancy by using two distinct media types, but now, consider cloud storage as one of those options (i.e., snapshots on volumes and backups on object storage).
• One Copy Offsite: Have one copy of your data stored offsite, which can be effortlessly achieved with cloud backup solutions (i.e., alternate AZ, region, or cloud provider).
• One Copy Offline, Air-gapped, or Immutable: Acknowledge the importance of having one copy that is either offline, air-gapped, or immutable. This aspect is critical, especially in the context of ransomware protection, where an offline, air-gapped, or immutable copy can be a lifesaver.
• Zero Errors with SureBackup Recovery Verification: Finally, ensure that your data is error-free by employing SureBackup recovery verification, which can proactively identify and address potential issues with your backups.

Mind the Gap

No, we are not talking about air gaps or protecting yourself from subway trains arriving at the station.  In its 2024 Data Protection Trends Report, Veeam, states that:

• “85% of organizations recognize an ‘Availability Gap’ between how fast they could recover versus what the business processes require.
• 76% of organizations recognize a ‘Protection Gap’ between how much data they could afford to lose and how often their data is protected.”

As you can see, many organisations are not as well-protected as they could/should be. Please call us for a no obligation exploration of how well your backup system is serving your needs. We can be reached at [email protected], or 1.877.238.9944.