SharePoint migration is quite a complex procedure and may induce data loss or corruption on the journey. This is the reason why businesses consider investing ample amount of time in planning and preparation. It is essential to have all the content intact in the destination just the way in the source. To maintain integrity of the data, make sure to backup SharePoint Online before executing the migration process.

SharePoint data backup provides an additional layer of security to your data. If anything goes wrong during the migration process, you can use the backup available in your system to restore data. This practice keeps your data safe and assure that there is minimum to zero downtime. 

Let’s get ahead with the information and learn what is the need to take a backup before SharePoint migration services.

Reasons to Backup SharePoint Online

There are multiple reasons to backup data from SharePoint before you actually transfer it to SharePoint Online. Here are some of those:

Restore Destination Effectively

With a saved backup, it is easy to validate that the destination has received each and every data from source through comparison. While migration, there are chances of missing out data or the structure often gets distorted. You can avoid such situations by restoring destination (SharePoint Online) appropriately through the backup.

Legal and Compliance Requirements

Many business sectors have to follow a certain guideline, which often requires them to retain data for a particular time period. Backup makes it easy for you to manage data over SharePoint Online and prevent unnecessary storage accumulation.

Avoid potential data loss

During SharePoint migration service, you may encounter data loss situations. If you haven’t saved data already, you may end up losing crucial business data. In case any issues occur with your SharePoint data, you can easily restore lost data using this backup.

Human Errors and System Failures

Organizations using cloud services like Microsoft 365 have multiple users often working on same documents. It saves different versions eliminating the need to share again and again. However, it also comes with a lot of risks such as accidental deletion or overwriting of data.

Unexpected issues like abrupt shutdown of system or server failure can also interfere with the process. This is avoidable with the data backup saved within your storage. 

Perform Granular Recovery of Data

A backup allows you to perform granular recovery of data rather than the complete dataset. It supports in easy recovery of selected items that goes missing during SharePoint migration service.

Protect Data Against Cyberthreats

Ransomware, malware, phishing, and other cyberattacks put your sensitive business data at stake. Losing it would directly mean all your efforts and resources invested over the years go to waste. However, if you have applied backup strategies, you can enjoy business continuity without a hassle.

What are the best data backup practices?

After learning the significance of SharePoint Online backup, it’s time to see what are the simple, effective, and reasonable practices to backup SharePoint Online data offline to your system.

1. The primary approach to backup is manually downloading files and folders one by one from the SharePoint site. Save them to the desired location within your computer’s local or network storage. Though, this method works when you have a small dataset, it’s not a viable option to save bulk data.
2. Another method to extract SharePoint Online data is to synchronize SharePoint sites with the OneDrive folder. It is important point to note that this method is only suitable to backup files and folders.
3. PowerShell commands also supports extraction of data from SharePoint Online. The only issue with this method is that you’ll need to be proficient in running these commands, else there may be missing or duplicate data.
4. One of the most effective methods to save data is using a professional data backup tool. These utilities make sure that there is no change in the structure and every bit of data is saved without fail. Another benefit of choosing a tool to save data is its ability to automate the backup process.

With these methods at your fingertips, you can avoid losing data to unexpected situations during migration.

Preventive measures to save data backup

Following the given measures will help you to avoid errors and complications during the backup process.

1. Consider prominent SharePoint migration tool that also supports data backup for utmost precision.
2. Follow the 3-2-1 practice, which means, keep three copies of backup stored in two medias along with one offline copy.
3. Do not take complete backups every time, rather follow incremental or differential process.
4. Always keep your backups encrypted to avoid unauthorized accesses.
5. Manage user access and modify the permissions in SharePoint for optimum security.

Downloading backup is important, but what’s more important is to keep it safe. Adopt these measures in your practice to perform smooth migration and secure the data.

Conclusion

There are so many threats to the data during the SharePoint migration. Saving data backup is a smart and logical move to keep your business data safe. However, if you rely on manual methods to extract backup, the route can be overwhelming. It is therefore suggested to use Kernel Migration for SharePoint, which is a full-fledged backup and SharePoint migration tool that fulfills your migration needs. The tool allows you to save backup to your desired location and select to export specific data. You can run on-demand processes to execute the backup using this professional tool.