1137 - Cloud services on the RedApp

Introduction

Through the RedApp, Redstor offers a variety of cloud backup and recovery services, listed below, as well as backup/migration and recovery of physical machines to Azure, and backup and recovery of machines and servers. For more on the security of our cloud services, see Article 1288. For more on data retention, see Article 106. 

To buy cloud products:

• New customers: Please see our website.
• Existing customers: Please contact Redstor Support.

To set up cloud products:

• New customers can follow the links below to access the setup steps for any service.
• Existing customers will not be able to configure cloud services correctly from the Storage Platform and therefore need to contact Redstor support for setup assistance. Please note: Simply creating a Collection for the particular cloud product will not allow the permissions that are required for backup and recovery to work.

Cloud services

The following cloud services can be used from the RedApp:

• • Azure Blob Storage
  • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
  • Azure Virtual Machines
  • Google Workspace (formerly G Suite)
  • Microsoft 365/M365 (formerly Office 365/O365)
  • QuickBooks
  • Salesforce
  • Xero

Azure Blob Storage

Redstor gives you the ability to backup your Azure Blob Storage accounts as snapshots in your Azure subscription, and recover them to the source or to a different storage account. To use the service, you need to be both a RedApp company administrator, and an owner / service administrator / co-administrator of the Azure subscription for the clusters you want to back up. Read more here.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Redstor gives you the ability to backup your Azure Kubernetes clusters to a different resource group within Azure, and recover them back to the source cluster. To use the service, you need to be both a RedApp company administrator, and an owner / service administrator / co-administrator of the Azure subscription for the clusters you want to back up. Read more here.

Redstor currently supports backup and recovery of:

Azure Virtual Machines

Redstor gives you the ability to backup your Azure Virtual Machines to the same resource group within Azure, and recover them back to the source or to a different group. To use the service, you need to be both a RedApp company administrator, and an owner / service administrator / co-administrator of the Azure subscription for the virtual machines you want to back up. Read more here. 

VMs are protected by deploying a virtual backup appliance into the Azure subscription where they are located. Each backup consists of a disk snapshot that is kept alongside the original VM, and is subject to the same security. 

You can also use our Azure Mobility functionality to back up physical machines or migrate them into Azure. 

In addition, we offer Azure VM backups to the Redstor Storage Platform in the form of a service called Redstor Protect. Note that this functionality may incur additional costs and only supports file and folder recovery. Full System Recovery and Azure Mobility cannot be used with Redstor Protect.

Please note that VMs with unmanaged disks are not currently supported.

Google Workspace (formerly G Suite)

Redstor gives you the ability to backup and restore Google Drive, Gmail and Classroom, as well as Contacts and Calendar. To use these services, you need to be both a RedApp company administrator, and a Google super administrator for your tenant organisation. 

Note: Google recommends creating a new super admin email address for this that is not specific to a particular user. Read more here.

Click on any service name to see its user guide. 

Drive

Redstor currently supports the following:

• Backup of files and folders
• Backup of shared drives
• Backup of trash items
  • Currently, for InstantData or single-item recovery purposes, trash items are not shown in a Trash folder but in the original folder from which they were deleted.
  • Similarly, trash files are always recovered to their original location in the Redstor Restores folder structure, i.e. Redstor Restores\Original Location\DeletedFile, and not to a Trash folder.
• Recovery back to Drive (new folder)
• Recovery using InstantData
• Single item recovery
• Backup and recovery of Google App Scripts, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms and Jamboards as part of Drive contents
  • App Scripts are backed up as .json files
  • Docs are backed up in Microsoft Word (.docx) format
  • Sheets are backed up in Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) format
  • Slides are backed up in Microsoft PowerPoint (.pptx) format
  • Drawings are backed up as SVG
  • Forms are backed up into a zip file containing the form layout and results
  • Jamboards are backed up as PDF files

Please note: Google Forms that are larger than 10MB cannot be backed up or recovered. 

Gmail

Redstor currently supports the following:

• Backup of messages (including archived messages, spam, trash and attachments)
• Backup of labels
• Recovery back to Gmail (new folder)
• Single item recovery

Classroom

Redstor currently supports the following:

• Backup of:
  • Courses, settings, material sets (including attachments), aliases, and announcements (including attachments, but not student replies)
  • Course invitations (including teachers and students)
  • Coursework (including links, forms, files, assignments, and student submissions)
  • Students (including student work folders, and guardians)
  • Teachers and teacher folders (including attachments)
  • Topics

Please note that due to Google API restrictions, we do not currently offer recovery back to Classroom (i.e. the original course location). Also note that the following is not currently backed up:

• Course calendar contents 
• Google Meet

Contacts

Redstor currently supports the following:

• Backup of Contacts
• Recovery back to Contacts (new folder)
• Recovery using InstantData
• Single item recovery

Calendar

Redstor currently supports the following:

• Backup of Calendar items
• Recovery back to Calendar (new folder)
• Recovery using InstantData
• Single item recovery

Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365)

Redstor gives you the ability to backup and restore Microsoft Exchange Mail, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. To add a backup set and do a first recovery, you need to be both a RedApp company administrator, and a Microsoft 365 global administrator for your tenant organisation. To do subsequent recoveries, you only need to be a RedApp company administrator and a Microsoft 365 product administrator. For a list of the permissions you will need to allow to back up Microsoft 365 services, see this list. For a list of all the Microsoft 365 licence types that Redstor supports, click here.

Click on any service name to see its user guide. 

Exchange Mail

Redstor currently supports the following:

• Recover back to Exchange (new folder)
• Single item recovery (Mail, Contacts, Calendar)
• Multiple mailbox recovery
• Shared mailbox backup and recovery
• Archive mailbox backup and recovery
• Calendar backup and recovery
• Contacts backup and recovery
• Export to PST
• Search (by recipient/s, sender, or subject)

The following is not supported:

• Just-in-time (JIT) or "viral" tenants
• Guest users
• Public contacts
• Public folders
• Private events in Calendar
• Individual EML or MSG files

Please note the following limitations:

• It is not possible to exclude specific file types from backups.
• Data with fidelity is only available via Microsoft Exchange Web Services (EWS).
• Large backups and archive mailbox backups may experience throttling, which results in long backup durations.
• Poor performance is seen on Linux.

OneDrive

Redstor currently supports the following:

• Recovery to original location (overwrite)
• Recovery back to OneDrive (new folder) 
• Recovery using InstantData
• Single item recovery
• Search (by file or folder name) 

Please note that the Recycle Bin is not currently backed up.

It is not possible to exclude specific file types from backups.

OneNote

Redstor currently supports the following:

• Recovery to original location (including single item recovery)
• Recovery using InstantData

Please note that due to Microsoft API restrictions, accounts containing more than 5000 OneNote items cannot currently be backed up.

SharePoint

Redstor currently supports the following:

• Backup of site structure (main site and subsites recursively)
• Multiple domains/domain aliases
• Backup of some owner/access details
• Backup of all document libraries identified as such
• Recovery to original location (overwrite)
• Recovery back to SharePoint (new folder) 
• Recovery using InstantData

Contents that are not currently backed up include (but are not limited to):

• Permissions on files
• Custom metadata on files
• Generic lists (metadata)
• Default non-document libraries
• Custom libraries not identified as document libraries (even if file-based)
• Pages and workflows
• Lists not based on the templates: documentLibrary, pictureLibrary, 851
• Custom site setup

The following should be noted with regard to SharePoint recovery:

• Recover to a new location creates a new site with a timestamp, e.g. Site A as on 2020-05-14 at 06-37-12.
• Recover to original location will recreate the subsites and document libraries if they do not exist.
• Recover to original location will fail if the original location has been deleted. The details of the failure can be found in the activity history for the specific recovery. A workaround for this is to recover to a new location and then rename the new site with the name of the original site.
• Recover to original location (if the location exists) will overwrite any existing files.
• Files recovered back into SharePoint will have their original timestamps preserved, as well as their titles and any values entered for custom columns (except for the image column, which is not supported). Other metadata and permissions will not be restored.

Please note the following limitations:

• It is not possible to exclude specific file types from backups.
• If a single SharePoint site has more than 1TB of data, the first-time backup can take a significant amount of time. Please contact your account manager or log a support ticket for assistance.
• Backup and recovery of SharePoint portals is not supported.

Teams

Redstor currently supports backup and recovery of:

• Teams (member and owner metadata)
• Public channels (member and owner metadata)
• Private and shared channels (messages and metadata, but NOT files - see Article 1345)
• Posts (messages, replies, and images)
  • Recordings are not backed up, but links to them are.
  • When Teams is recovered, posts and replies are currently not restored to the post thread (due to Microsoft API restrictions), but to a purposely created OneNote tab.
• Files 
• Tabs (metadata, not contents)

It is not possible to exclude specific file types from backups.

The following options are supported for recovery:

• Recovery to original location (overwrite)
• Recovery back to Teams (new folder)
• Single item recovery
• Recovery using InstantData
• Teams can also be recovered to a physical machine by sending a recovery link to the email address associated with each channel. Administrators can then use these links to recover.

Backup and recovery of archived teams are not supported. If a team has been archived, our backup system is unable to access the data to perform a backup.

• Should an archived team be included in your backup selection, the backup scan will fail with the error "Archived teams not supported".
• To backup an archived team, you will need to un-archive it and run a backup, then re-archive the team. This backup will now be available for recovery, and you can ignore future "Archived teams not supported" errors.
• Read more about archived teams in this article from Microsoft's knowledge base.

Please note that due to Microsoft API restrictions, the following is not currently backed up:

• Private chats
• Certain features particular to Teams for Education:
  • Assignments 
  • Students

While attachments within the Files and Assignments tabs are backed up as SharePoint files, we cannot currently backup related features like Grades, Student Submissions, Rubric Grading, and Outcomes. See Article 1321 for more information.

QuickBooks

Redstor gives you the ability to backup and recover your QuickBooks data. To use the service, you need to be both a RedApp company administrator, and system administrator for your organisation. Read more here.

Entities that are currently backed up include (but are not limited to):

• Accounts
• Classes
• Company currency
• Company information
• Customers
• Departments
• Employees
• Item (Inventory)
• Journal codes (FR locale)
• Payment methods
• Preferences
• Tax codes
• Terms
• Vendors

Transactions that are currently backed up include (but are not limited to):

• Bill payments
• Bills
• Budgets
• Credit card payments
• Credit memos
• Deposits
• Estimates
• Invoices
• Journal entries
• Payments
• Purchase orders
• Purchases
• Refund receipts
• Sales orders
• Sales receipts
• Tax payments
• Time activities
• Transfers
• Vendor credit

The following options are supported for recovery:

• Recovery back to QuickBooks (new folder)
• Recovery using InstantData

Salesforce

Redstor gives you the ability to backup your Salesforce CRM software and recover it with InstantData. To use the service, you need to be both a RedApp company administrator, and system administrator for your organisation. Read more here.

Redstor currently supports backup and InstantData recovery of:

• Standard objects
• Custom objects
• Metadata

The following is currently not supported for backup and recovery:

• Objects that are not queryable
• Objects that are not supported by the Bulk API, i.e. objects without a key prefix (see this Salesforce article for more)
• File-based objects, i.e. objects that contain a field of type Base64
• The following sObjects:

Xero

Redstor gives you the ability to backup and restore Xero accounting software. To use the service, you need to be both a RedApp company administrator, and a Xero user at the organisation/s you wish to backup. Read more here.

Redstor currently supports backup and InstantData recovery of: