1. Introduction
2. Zero-downtime protection for critical accounts and data
3. Real-time backup to Amazon S3 for other data

Introduction

This guide will show how to use real-time backup and sync with Google Workspace for optimal cost and performance.

Real-time backup and sync with Google Workspace offers optimal protection and performance, particularly for critical accounts and data, by ensuring zero downtime and data loss through failover backups to Google Drive or Team Drives. For less critical data, a cost-effective solution involves real-time backup to Amazon S3, providing zero data loss but with a potentially slower recovery time depending on the setup.

Here’s the setup:

1. Important data and accounts are backed up as a “failover” to Google Drive or Google Team Drive.
2. Other less critical data is backed up to Amazon S3.

This backup and sync strategy is important because it ensures zero downtime for critical accounts by constantly backing up to Google Drive, providing excellent recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). Furthermore, it offers a cost-effective solution for less critical data with real-time backups to Amazon S3, achieving zero data loss while keeping costs lower by not requiring additional accounts.

Let’s explain further after we go over some key terms.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the max data loss time that a business can handle after a system crash or disaster.
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the max time a system or process is down before having to be restored to prevent issues.

Zero-downtime protection for critical accounts and data

Key accounts and data are constantly backed up to Google Drive or Team Drives for zero downtime, protecting against:

1. MS 365 outages (DNS issues or global outages). Users can switch to Google Drive or Team Drives if MS 365 is down.
2. Data restore: Get back lost data or history by logging into Google Drive or Team Drive. Use cloudHQ for snapshots too.

Benefits include:

1. Excellent RTO – Instant restore, minimizing downtime.
2. Excellent RPO – Zero data loss ensures continuous data flow.
3. Full protection if MS 365 goes down.

The downside is:

1. High cost, as each user needs a Google Drive account.

Zero-downtime (failover) protection:
Sharepoint (admin@acme.com)/HR_site/Documents       -> Google Shared Drive (admin@acme.com)/HR
Sharepoint (admin@acme.com)/Projects_site/Documents -> Google Shared Drive (admin@acme.com)/Shared/Projects
   ...
OneDrive (alice@company.com) ->  Google Drive (alice@company.com)/OneDrive backup
OneDrive (bob@company.com)   ->  Google Drive (bob@company.com)/OneDrive backup
    ... 

Real-time backup to Amazon S3 for other data

Backing up to Amazon S3 is cost-effective. Real-time backup means RPO is zero, so no data loss. But since data must be restored to use, RTO isn’t great. RTO can be better if users can directly access backups from Amazon S3, though they’ll need to know how.

Benefits of this setup:

1. Excellent RPO – Zero data loss.
2. Lower costs as no extra account is required.

Drawbacks are:

1. RTO might be slow, based on setup. Sharing an Amazon S3 folder can speed up restores, but it’s complex and usually needs admin help.
2. No protection if MS 365 goes down.

Backup to Amazon S3:
OneDrive (alice@company.com) -> Amazon S3/backup_bucket/alice@company.com/OneDrive (alice@company.com) 
OneDrive (bob@company.com)   -> Amazon S3/backup_bucket/bob@company.com/OneDrive (bob@company.com) 
  ...