Overview

CodeTwo Backup is designed to create local backups of your Exchange and SharePoint data sitting on Microsoft 365 (Office 365) and on-premises servers. The program allows you to back up mailboxes, public folders, SharePoint sites and site collections, Microsoft 365 groups, as well as Microsoft 365 / Office 365 users' OneDrive for Business data. CodeTwo Backup can be installed on any Windows-based machine, physical or virtual (including Azure virtual machines), located within a particular domain for Exchange or SharePoint on-premises backups or with internet access for Exchange Online and SharePoint Online backups, that meets the specified system requirements. The built-in search mechanism makes it possible to look through the backed-up data in detail, from entire mailboxes and SharePoint sites to individual folders, lists, libraries, and even items, such as emails and their attachments. You can then restore selected items, folders or whole mailboxes and sites to a chosen target location. CodeTwo Backup can be used to back up and restore data for Exchange Server 2019/2016, SharePoint Server 2019/2016, and Microsoft 365 / Office 365 (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business).

Backup - Overview diagram.

How it works

To back up your data, you need to define a job referring to particular mailboxes or SharePoint sites (including OneDrive for Business sites) residing in Microsoft 365 or on your on-premises Exchange server. CodeTwo Backup enables you to create multiple jobs that can be run concurrently. Mailboxes and other data are processed by jobs in recurring cycles or as one-time jobs and saved to a local repository called storage – a local folder on a machine where the program is installed where backups of Exchange and SharePoint data are kept. It is possible to create multiple storages. The program backs up data using the recurring incremental backup model. Thanks to this solution, the amount of data pulled from the source server in subsequent backup cycles is limited only to new or modified items, which reduces the size of the storage and saves time (read more about item versioning).

You can choose to back up individual or multiple Exchange mailboxes or SharePoint sites. Additionally, you can configure the Exchange backup job to back up items depending on their age or to exclude special folders, such as Deleted Items or Junk Email, from being backed up.

Learn how to create backup jobs

Security

Your data is always encrypted during the backup process and remains encrypted after it is saved to a local storage. That way, you can view the contents of the storage only in CodeTwo Backup. The program also lets you password protect all storages and restrict the access to your data to selected users only.

CodeTwo Backup connects with Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online and SharePoint Online) by using secure modern authentication methods (OAuth 2.0) and supports multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Learn more why CodeTwo Backup is a secure solution

Data restoring

Data saved in a storage location is displayed by the program in a way that mimics the original folder structure of mailboxes and SharePoint sites. Thanks to this solution, you can quickly browse and search data backed up in a storage by using a variety of filters (such as text fields, date, size, sender, recipient, etc.). This also allows you to find the exact item you want to restore. CodeTwo Backup lets you perform granular restore operations (via restore jobs), which means that you can recover individual items, selected folders or SharePoint list and libraries, as well as entire mailboxes or sites. You can also select exact versions of source items or select items depending on their modification time. As far as the target location for data restoration is concerned, you can choose between the original source (the original mailbox, site, folder, etc. on the same server) and another location (different mailbox/site/folder on the original as well as another server). The program also allows you to decide how to resolve item conflicts you can choose to overwrite the existing items, leave them unchanged or duplicate them.

Learn how to create restore jobs

Data retention policy

CodeTwo Backup features data retention policies that can be applied to the backed-up Exchange and/or SharePoint data. This allows you to set up automatic removal of items that do not fulfill certain data retention requirements (e.g. items which are older than a set number of days). A retention policy is always applied separately for each of your storages. Thanks to this function, you can control the size of your storages, and you will never encounter an error caused by insufficient free storage space on your server. We strongly recommend combining the data retention functionality with storage archiving feature described below.

Read more about CodeTwo Backup data retention policies 

Storage archiving

When you are backing up your Exchange and SharePoint data, the storage takes more and more space on your hard disk. Consequently, at some point, you may need to move your backup data to an external drive or to a network location. This can be done by using archive jobs. If you combine storage archiving with data retention policies, you will be able to, for example, store all Exchange data on the external drive and keep only the latest items in the backup storage. The program allows you to archive Exchange Online and SharePoint Online data either separately or jointly. If necessary, you can always move the archived data back to the program through the use of importing archive jobs.

Learn how to create archive jobs

Scheduler and activity periods

You can define the time frames (called activity periods) when a job will be running. This allows you to schedule the program e.g. to back up data only during the lowest traffic on your server. The scheduler can be considered as a tool that automatically clicks the Start and Stop buttons for a job within defined time frames.

You can use the scheduler for various types of jobs, both continuous (default) and one-time, but the available configuration options differ depending on the job type.

Learn more about the scheduler and activity periods

Working with multiple servers

The program can be used to back up and restore data simultaneously for multiple Exchange and SharePoint servers located even in different domains or forests. The program can also work with Microsoft 365 and on-premises environments at the same time. As the choice of a server connection is done per job, each job can be connected to a different server.

Learn more about managing server connections

Background operation

CodeTwo Backup consists of two main components: the Administration Panel and the Backup Service. The Administration Panel is used to define and manage all the features of the program, whereas the Backup Service is responsible for executing jobs, i.e. backing up and restoring data. Such a solution makes it possible to run all jobs in the background and does not require the Administration Panel to be constantly open. Furthermore, you do not even need to log in to the system.

Learn more about the program's components

See next

Frequently Asked Questions

Supported platforms and requirements

Quick guide to creating and restoring backups

In this article

Was this information useful?