I've finally managed to secure a budget for a proper backup solution for our M365 environment after almost two years of internal discussions. We have a significant amount of data to back up—approximately 140TB across Exchange and OneDrive, with an additional 8TB in SharePoint. A big chunk of this data is stored in OneDrive Plan 2 accounts, acting as cold storage for media files. I've been testing several options including Veeam, AFI.ai, and AvePoint. Right now, AvePoint seems to be the best choice primarily because of its pricing model, which focuses on licenses per object rather than data size. This ends up costing us around £1,089 per month for 330 objects, including shared mailboxes. However, I'm not thrilled about AvePoint's restore experience; it feels cumbersome and often requires downloading and re-uploading data, which isn't ideal. In contrast, AFI.ai offered a better user experience, especially with restores, but their pricing based on data size could get out of hand quickly. I'm on the lookout for other solutions at a comparable price point that can effectively manage large data volumes with a more streamlined restore process. Also, how do others handle restores at this scale? Is the download/re-upload method just the standard approach? Would love some real-world feedback before making a final decision.
5 Answers
You might look into Cohesity’s Backup-as-a-Service. They offer a flexible per-user licensing model and I've never had to download data locally to restore, which could be a huge relief compared to what you're facing right now. Plus, they have a 30-day free trial available!
Honestly, if you're using OneDrive for cold storage, pulling that data back locally onto a Synology could significantly reduce your M365 backup size. Synology has its own backup solutions that could also seamlessly integrate into what you’re already doing.
Have you considered Acronis CyberProtect? They offer a model where you pay per seat rather than for data size, which could be beneficial for large environments like yours. Many companies are happy with it now, especially since it can export PSTs, which was an issue in the past. It might be worth checking out the user experience with restores in your case too.
N-able Cove could be another option for you. I've had a positive experience with their service, especially since they've added the ability to export PSTs. They operate with a storage pool model, so if you have, say, 200 users, you'll get a backing pool of about 200TB. It could be worth asking for a demo to see how their restore process works.
I recommend checking out Microsoft’s native backup solution, but I should warn you that, for your scale, the pricing could be quite steep. Depending on your requirements, it might not be the most cost-effective route.
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