Google Workspace service - failover and back-up

[Tim2976]

I want to try and understand what the failover/data back-up process looks like for Google Workspace. If Google Workspace primary services are interrupted, what happens, and also, what does the back-up look like for all the data stored within our G Suite?

[StephenHind]

@Tim2976 Google Workspace does not provide any kind of backup: you need to purchase a third-party service to backup Google Workspace outside of Google Workspace.  Failover is built in to the product and you never see it, but you can take steps to add your own fail-overs if you wish (again third-party solutions) but are pretty unnecessary due to the way Google has designed Workspace.

I definitely recommend getting a backup service for user error and malicious actors etc.

[icrew]

In terms of the fundamental uptime and availability of the Google Workspace services, see https://workspace.google.com/terms/sla.html

Google does keep robust back ups of all of the material in Workspace, to enable them to meet those SLAs. See the "Backups" section of https://support.google.com/a/answer/9223653?hl=en for a brief overview of that.

However, as @StephenHind mentioned, if you want to guard against user errors (e.g., someone deleting something in Mail or Drive, and not realizing it before it gets removed from the Trash 30 days later), you do definitely want to consider a backup solution.

Hope that helps,

Ian

[christiannewman]

You can reach out to your Google Cloud Partner to see which backup solution they'd recommend for your organization. For best results, look for a backup solution that performs automatic snapshots of your core Google Workspace data multiple times daily, backs up and restores data in full fidelity (i.e. retaining file ID/format/version history/comments etc) and has a user-friendly self-serve restore tool.