Q&A with Carbonite's Jamie Zajac

Hellow Webroot Community! 

I hope you’re having a great week so far and are enjoying fall. 

@jzajac is joining us today to answer your questions about Carbonite. Thanks to all of you who have submitted your questions already (I’ll post them below) but if you want to ask Jamie anything else at the moment, please feel free to do so. 

With that, let’s get started!

How can I convince customers to buy Carbonite Backup, when they consider that everyhting is backed up by Microsoft anyway? - Gordon K.

With Changes to the way many offices work, products like Carbonite are becoming more important than ever. I have yet to use this product in my role, but i would like to know what controls on bandwidth/recommended bandwidth requirements the product has, many business' have varied internet connections so knowing the product is flexible enough to work on poor connections would be good to know. - Jake B. 

What is the frequency of backups? - Bill M. 

Can you backup and restore Teams with this product? - Arjan A. 

Do you have some webinar/tutorials you could share or point me in the direction of how to find these? - Daniel C. 

Does any of the carbonite products have image backup and restore for workstations? - RemoteIT

How does it work for disaster recovery and business continuity? - Gabriele M. 

Does it work for server folders to sharepoint? - Jason C. 

Are you superior to Veeam? If so, why? - Kevin K. 

I am curious about the process of the backups. Where is it stored? Hybrid available? Cost? Same for Endpoints.  - Sterling W. 

How can I convince customers to buy Carbonite Backup, when they consider that everything is backed up by Microsoft anyway?

You have to split the conversation into 2 categories - backup and high availability. High availbility is the ability to keep the service up and running. Backup is the protection of the data itself from many forms of data loss. Microsoft focus their efforts on high availability and ensuring that the service is up and functioning however they dont provide backup of the data. For example, if data is deleted or permissions are changed on a file, Microsoft cannot tell if that is an accidental deletion (subject to only a 30 day retention period in teh recycle bin) or malicious deletion (i.e. a disgruntled employee) or normal deletion becuase the content is no longer business relevant. By having a backup in place, you are protected against these forms of everyday data loss which Microsoft does not provide.

An emerging use-case for backup is not just the data but also the permissions. As you rollout more services, the ability to share content more widely is also expanded. It also leads to permissions (often done in bulk on a sharepoint, teams site, onedrive, etc) to be changed. In case permissions are changed improperly, it can lead to either no one having access to a business-critical site or exposing data too widely causing data leakage or possibly compliance breaches. How can you recover from this? Well, painfully and slowly unless you have a backup solution which can roll backup just the permissions on the site to what they were at a known good point. This is a use-case that is becoming more and more important as sharing applications are increased and adoption increases. 

With Changes to the way many offices work, products like Carbonite are becoming more important than ever. I have yet to use this product in my role, but i would like to know what controls on bandwidth/recommended bandwidth requirements the product has, many business' have varied internet connections so knowing the product is flexible enough to work on poor connections would be good to know.

Carbonite Endpoint has a patented encryption/de-duplicate algorithm. We de-duplicate the data across the entire company but we do it in a very secure way. The data is de-duplicated after it is encrypted and using a unique encryption key for every block of a file. This gives great efficiency (as no 2 endpoints backup the same chunk of a file) but also ensures high security as no two blocks have the same encryption key. 

What is the frequency of backups in Carbonite Backup for Microsoft 365?

Carbonite Backup for Microsoft 365 backs up 4x/day. 

Can you backup and restore Teams with this product?

Yes, we backup teams data (including private channels which many vendors do not yet cover). Here is a full list of all the elements of teams that we can cover (pretty much everything available in Microsoft APIs): https://support.carbonite.com/endpoint/articles/INF-Components-in-Teams-Channel

Do you have some webinar/tutorials you could share or point me in the direction of how to find these?

Definitely! We have materials, a video, and a free trial available from our website: https://www.carbonite.com/products/carbonite-endpoint-protection/office-365-backup 

Does any of the carbonite products have image backup and restore for workstations?

We have image backup in our server products (notably Carbonite Server Backup) but not in our endpoint product. Historically, I've found that image backups (which they can cover the entire OS and application set) can be cumbersome to download from the cloud and re-load on an endpoint reliably (changing hardware, often outdated set of files in the backup set, etc). It also almost always requires physically having the endpoint device vs a centralized restore from a cloud console. I'm curious what you are looking to achieve here. Would love to have a follow-up conversation. 

Regarding Backup for Microsoft 365, how does it work for disaster recovery and business continuity?

Carbonite Backup for Microsoft 365 backs up the data so that it can be restored through any form of data loss. You can also download the data from the backup system. We do not provide high availability or Microsoft 365 but we can allow you to retrieve data from the backup in this scenario. 

Does Carbonite Migrate work for server folders to Sharepoint?

With Carbonite Migrate, there are various types of migrations. You can use our data-only migrate to migrate data from a server to a destination server. We do not migrate directly into Sharepoint online but we could migrate to another server which haps a mapped drive or a synced drive to Sharepoint. 

Are you superior to Veeam? If so, why?

A big difference I would highlight is having a complete cloud-enabled solution. With Veeam, you have to purchase an on-prem license and then replicate to either a secondary data center, cloud connect service provider, or to a public cloud solution. With Carbonite Server Backup, we focus on offering all the components in a single subscription (local appliance as a monthly fee, cloud storage in our cloud, all the software you need, and a single support line to call for any issue). We also cover off the platforms such as VMWare, Hyper-V, Windows, Linux, endpoint such as macOS and Windows, and Microsoft 365 data but do not require that you bring your own infrastructure. You have to think about whether you want to put your time into managing Veeam infrastructure (hardware, software, network, cloud, upgrading versions, license management, etc) or leave all of this to Carbonite and focus on other IT-value-add solutions. 

I am curious about the process of the backups. Where is it stored? Hybrid available? Cost? Same for Endpoints.

For Carbonite Server, we offer data centers in the US, Canada, and Europe. Our backups can be deployed in an onsite only, direct to cloud, or hybrid configuration. We also offer "Hardware-as-a-Service" where you get the local appliance, software, and our cloud (with support for all) in a single subscription. This minimizes the upfront investment required to buy and configure an appliance as well as reduces risk of you outgrowing the appliance (we just send a new one to you). In terms of cost, the deployment model will change the price so you should reach out to our sales team to discuss the details. We can get you setup with a full demo very quickly and discuss pricing for the configuration you are interested in. 

For Carbonite Endpoint, we store the data in our cloud or you can bring your own Azure instance. We offer clouds around the world including US, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia, and Singapore. This is priced per endpoint device backed up. 

Thanks again to all of you who submitted your questions and to Jamie for logging on today to answer them. 

I think we’ll look at doing a few more of these in the future so be on the lookout!