Backup & DR
Data protection and disaster recovery
Backups only count if a restore has been proven — so we prove it, on a schedule.
Overview
What this service is for
Almost every organisation has backups. Considerably fewer have restores. The distinction becomes painfully clear during an incident, when a job has been silently failing for weeks, retention was shorter than anyone believed, or the backup repository sits on the same network the ransomware just encrypted.
We design data protection backwards from recovery. What must be running again within an hour, and what can wait until tomorrow? How much data loss is genuinely tolerable for each system? Those answers — recovery time and recovery point objectives — determine the architecture, not the other way round.
Microsoft 365 deserves specific attention. Microsoft guarantees the availability of its service, not the recoverability of your organisation's content after deletion, malicious action, or a retention gap. Native controls help; they are not equivalent to a backup you control and can restore from independently.
What you receive
- Recovery objectives register covering every protected system
- Backup architecture design and implementation
- Immutability and offsite copy configuration
- Restore test schedule with evidence of successful recovery
- Monthly protection reporting with failure follow-up
Outcomes to expect
- Documented, agreed recovery objectives instead of vague expectations
- A last good copy an attacker cannot reach
- Restore capability proven on a schedule, not discovered during a crisis
- Backup failures noticed and fixed within days, not months
Capabilities
How AAG can help
The specific work covered by this practice area.
Workload backup
Physical servers, virtual machines, and business-critical applications protected to a documented policy.
Microsoft 365 protection
Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams data retained beyond native recycle bin windows.
Disaster recovery design
Recovery objectives agreed per system, then engineered — including secondary site or cloud failover where warranted.
Ransomware-resilient architecture
Immutable and air-gapped copies so an attacker who reaches production cannot destroy your last good copy.
Restore testing
Scheduled recovery drills with documented results, because an untested backup is an assumption.
Retention and compliance policy
Retention aligned to obligations and appetite, without unbounded storage growth.
Delivery
How the engagement runs
Phases with clear entry and exit points, so you always know what is being decided and what happens next.
Define objectives
Recovery time and recovery point targets agreed per system with business owners.
Design protection
Repositories, schedules, retention, immutability, and offsite copies specified to meet those targets.
Implement and verify
Deployment followed by an initial restore test to prove the design end-to-end.
Operate and drill
Ongoing monitoring, failure remediation, and periodic recovery drills with written outcomes.
Who this is for
The people who usually sponsor this work
CIOs and IT managers
You need architecture that your team can actually run, vendors consolidated, and a partner who escalates instead of deflecting.
CFOs and finance leaders
You need licence spend that reconciles, renewals without surprises, and a cost model you can defend in a budget review.
COOs and operations leaders
You need uptime, continuity that has been tested, and fewer working days lost to technology friction.
Founders and SME owners
You need enterprise-grade security and collaboration without building an internal IT department to run it.
Risk and compliance leads
You need identity controls, retention policies, and recovery evidence that stand up to an audit.
Questions
Frequently asked
The questions clients ask before committing to this service.
Microsoft protects the availability of the service and provides limited native retention. It does not provide a full organisational backup: accidental and malicious deletion, retention gaps, and ransomware scenarios still require a backup you control independently.
Works well with
Related services
These practice areas are commonly delivered alongside this one.
Like to know more?
Talk to us about backup & dr
Send a short brief and we will come back with a considered response, not a generic brochure.