“Backup” and “archive” get used interchangeably, but they solve different problems. Confusing the two is how businesses end up unable to produce a three-year-old record — or paying to keep data they never needed.
Backup: get back to working
A backup exists to recover recent, working data quickly after loss, corruption or an attack. It keeps a rolling set of recovery points — enough history to roll back a bad change or a ransomware event, then older points age out as newer ones are taken.
Archive: keep specific records for years
An archive exists to retain specific records for a long, defined period — often for legal, tax or compliance reasons. It’s about guaranteed long-term retention of chosen data, not fast recovery of everything.
What retention means here
Retention is set by policy: we configure how many hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly recovery points are kept on the appliance and in the cloud. Microsoft 365 backup keeps everything, with unlimited retention. But backup is not a legal-hold or archiving service — if you must keep records for a set number of years, tell us during setup so we plan for it.
Getting both right
Most businesses need solid backup first, and a deliberate plan for anything that must be kept for years. Tell us your obligations and we’ll set retention to match — talk to our team.
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