1585 - Recovering M365 data during a Microsoft outage

This article describes different scenarios in which a customer may need to recover their Redstor-protected Microsoft 365 data (Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams) while Microsoft itself is experiencing a service outage or performance issues.

Microsoft-independent recovery scenarios

1. Performance issues with the customer's Microsoft environment

This scenario can be caused by a number of reasons outside of Redstor's control, including (but not limited to):

• a customer's tenant being compromised by a malicious threat actor,
• a customer misconfiguration that prevents Redstor's services from operating as intended, and/or
• performance issues/outages on Microsoft's side.

These issues could result in challenges such as users being unable to log into the RedApp using the Microsoft SSO, or users being unable to update backup settings and configurations.

In this type of scenario, other RedApp authentication methods will typically function as anticipated, e.g. Google SSO or email login, providing a way to access Redstor's services. Alternatively, affected customers can log a request with Redstor Support to assist with configuration updates and/or data recovery. 

In these cases, recovery of M365 data can be performed using Redstor's InstantData tool and/or cloud to cloud recovery methods such as .pst recovery.

2. Performance issues with Microsoft Azure, impacting Redstor's ability to deliver the service

This scenario can be caused by a number of reasons outside of Redstor's control, including (but not limited to)

• Microsoft performance issues/outages, and/or
• core networking/infrastructure performance issues/outages.

These issues could result in a range of issues, such as users being unable to log into the RedApp, users being unable to initiate recoveries, or additional backups being made. It is important to note that in these situations, depending on the severity, customers are highly likely to be unable to use core Microsoft services, and/or to experience degraded performance of these Microsoft services.

In this type of scenario, historical backups (i.e. backups made prior to the onset of the issue/s) will be unaffected, as these backups reside outside of Microsoft Azure environment. As such, recovery of these backups will be possible, and customers can request this via the Redstor Support team. Recoveries can be performed using InstantData, and customers will be able to access their data on local machines (e.g. workstations, laptops, NAS devices).

Whilst Redstor is confident that these scenarios cover the vast majority of possible issues, these examples are not exhaustive. Given the complex nature of Microsoft's infrastructure and backup technology, any recovery scenario will have unique challenges, and the speed of recovery will depend on factors such as the type, locality, severity, time, and scale of performance issue/outage.

Redstor continually reviews and enhances the robustness of our platform and processes to ensure that we can offer our partners and customers the highest possible quality of service. As a result, we are confident in our ability to continue delivering service, and assist customers to recover their data, in the scenarios described above.

Redstor's recovery methods

Depending on the scope of the outage or performance issue, the following methods may be available to customers to enable them to recover their M365 data:

In the event the customer's tenant is completely gone (e.g. deleted, corrupted, compromised by a malicious third party), the following recovery methods are still available to customers:

If a customer loses access to their Microsoft tenant for whatever reason, they will need the encryption key of any account they wish to restore via InstantData. If they do not have the encryption key, the customer can request a Group Certificate for the group in which the account is located. Once the group certificate has been authorised and signed by Redstor, the customer can upload it to our Storage Platform and retrieve the encryption key for the account. Note that there are scenarios in which encryption key retrieval is not possible unless a backup of the account completed after the Group Certificate upload. Read more about Group Certificates in Article 1148.

While group certificate management is currently only possible using the Storage Platform Console, there are plans to replace the group certificate mechanism with a solution where customers can bring their own key management system to be used for secure key storage (no timeframes at the moment).

See also:

• Article 1288 - Cloud security
• Article 1531 - Data processing for Microsoft 365 backup and recovery