Google Vault Backup Vs CloudAlly Amazon AWS Backup
Being a readily available add-on for Google Apps, Google Vault could be a potentially good data protection and backup alternative. Google Vault Backup is necessary in any constellation.
But, does it provide a complete data protection solution with backup or recovery from any point?
And, how does it measure up against CloudAlly, which is a leading provider of cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery services?
In this article, we take a look at the features offered by Google Vault and CloudAlly, along with their pros and cons.
The objective is to do a direct comparison of these services to understand which one is more suitable for the protection of Google Apps data.
Things to Look for in a Google Apps Data Protection Plan
To be able to compare CloudAlly and Google Vault, we first need to understand what should be considered when selecting a suitable data protection service or tool.
First of all, the service should be able to search the data and export any data that is required on site.
It should also be possible to restore individual items and to restore complete user accounts from any point in time.
Now, let us check out the details of the two popular backup services for Google Apps.
Google Vault Backup
Google Vault is a powerful add-on provided by Google that allows your enterprise to retain, search, store and export emails or chat messages for quick discovery and compliance requirements.
It collects all email correspondence that comes into and goes out of your company. It thus empowers your administrators to locate or search for any email item, whenever required.
For messages, it is possible to place a “hold” at the company level or account level.
For this purpose, your company administrators need to specify the keyword and date for the messages to be included under the “hold”.
The advantage of this is that you can retain the data until the “hold” period expires or until it is removed by the administrators.
While the “hold” is active, the end user cannot change or even delete the data covered under the “hold”. This type of “hold” is pretty useful for lawyers for litigation purposes.
How to Access the Vault Data?
Your company administrator needs to carry out a search to spot particular data items and export them. Once they are exported, the items can be downloaded in a compressed file to use with any email program or even text editor.
Limitations
Google Vault Backup may be able to search your data or files on Google Drive, but it cannot retain them. So, if any of the Google Drive files is deleted accidentally, it will not be able to help you recover them.
In fact, it cannot offer a point-in-time recovery for any of the popular Google Apps, such as Calendars, Contacts, and Drive.
As mentioned earlier, the Vault can hold data at the account level, but the Vault data cannot be restored directly back to the account of the end user.
If any user (account) of Google Apps is deleted, all the corresponding data will be removed along with the removal of Vault. This is because the Vault repository is maintained within the Gmail account of a user.
Summary
It is important to note that Google Vault was only designed for e-discovery and compliance. It can thus only retrieve individual emails or chat messages and does not offer full-fledged backup and recovery functionality for all Google Apps.
You can avail this service at $5 per month ($60 per year) for each Vault user.
CloudAlly Secure Amazon AWS Backup
CloudAlly is a comprehensive backup and recovery service for all Google Apps data. It is a highly reliable, cloud-based data backup service.
Along with Google Apps, it also offers automated daily backups of Office 365, SharePoint/OneDrive for Business, Salesforce, Box for Business and more to an unlimited Amazon secure storage.
Your organization’s administrator can activate the backups for all Google Apps users (falling under one domain) or individual users with a single click.
Also, in the case of any data loss, restoration and data export is possible with a single click. You are thus able to quickly recover your Google Apps data from any point in time.
Backup
With CloudAlly, there is no limitation to the storage and it offers unlimited retention of daily archives. This allows for backups on a daily basis and helps to considerably reduce the on-premises storage requirements.
If that was not enough, CloudAlly also empowers you to control all your backups from a single management console.
This clearly saves a lot of time by getting rid of the admin processes that require too much manual effort.
With regard to the backups taken using CloudAlly, they continue to be available to you, even after any Google Apps user (account) is deleted.
They only cease to exist when the administrator removes them. It is, therefore, possible for your company to archive user backups for an indefinite amount of time by using the “backup pause” feature of CloudAlly.
Restore
When the need arises to restore any data at an individual item level or at any higher level (folder, mailbox and more), you can simply search your CloudAlly backups.
The restored data is generally stored with a date and time stamp in a sub-folder named “CloudAlly Restore”.
Unlike Google Vault, it is possible to restore the data directly to the user’s account. In fact, you can even restore it back to a different user account, if there is such a requirement.
Export
CloudAlly enables you to export data (which has been backed up) in various formats, including .vcf, .eml. Data can also be exported in .pst format, which is compatible with the commonly used email platform in enterprises, namely Outlook.
Data Security and Compliance
You can be sure about the adherence to data security and customer confidentiality best practices, as CloudAlly is Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant and ISO 27001 certified.
CloudAlly takes care of data security laws to such an extent that you are given the choice to opt for servers based in the U.S. (by default), EU or Australia.
Summary
With the most comprehensive backup and recovery features on offer, CloudAlly proves itself to be a leading provider of cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery services.
It is ideal for the protection of your Google Apps data with Gmail, Calendars, Tasks, Contacts, Chat and Google Drive!
You can avail the CloudAlly services at $3 per month ($30 per year) for every Google Apps user. What is more, you can even explore their services on a free trial basis for around 15 days.
If you have a non-profit or academic organization, you will even get special discounts from CloudAlly.
We hope that the above comparison of Google Vault Backup and CloudAlly enables you to make an informed decision when selecting your ideal Google Apps data protection tool.
