AhsayACB Microsoft 365 Best Practices

July 8, 2025

Best Practices and Recommendations

The following are some best practices or recommendations we strongly recommend you follow before you start any Microsoft 365 backup and restore.

Temporary Directory Folder Location (For Backup and Restore Running on AhsayACB Only)

Temporary directory folder is used by AhsayACB for storing backup set index files and any incremental or differential backup files generated during a backup job. To ensure optimal backup / restoration performance, it is recommended that the temporary directory folder is set to a local drive with sufficient free disk space.

Performance Recommendations

  • Enable schedule backup jobs when system activity is low to achieve the best possible performance.
  • Perform test restores periodically to ensure your backup is set up and performed properly. Performing recovery test can also help identify potential issues or gaps in your recovery plan. It's important that you do not try to make the test easier, as the objective of a successful test is not to demonstrate that everything is flawless. There might be flaws identified in the plan throughout the test and it is important to identify those flaws.

Set Backup Destination

After creating the backup set in Run on Client mode on AhsayCBS user web console, please remember to log in to AhsayACB to set the backup destination if you want the backup destination to be Local / Mapped Drive / Removable Drive.

Backup Destination

  • At least one offsite or cloud destination
  • At least one local destination for fast recovery

Log in to AhsayACB

After modifying the backup schedule setting of the Run on client backup set on AhsayCBS user web console, please remember to log in to the AhsayACB client once to synchronize the changes immediately.

Periodic Backup Schedule

The periodic backup schedule should be reviewed regularly to ensure that the interval is sufficient to handle the data volume on the machine. Over time, data usage pattern may change on a production server, i.e. the number of new files created, the number of files which are updated / deleted, and new users may be added, etc.

Consider the following key points to efficiently handle backup sets with periodic backup schedule.

  • Hardware - to achieve optimal performance, compatible hardware requirements is a must. Ensure you have the backup machine's appropriate hardware specifications to accommodate frequency of backups;
    • So that the data is always backed up within the periodic backup interval
    • So that the backup frequency does not affect the performance of the production server
  • Network - make sure to have enough network bandwidth to accommodate the volume of data within the backup interval.
  • Retention Policy - also make sure to consider the retention policy settings and Retention Area storage management which can grow because of the changes in the backup data for each backup job.

Authentication

Since Modern Authentication is already available, it is recommended that backup sets are migrated to Modern Authentication. All newly created Microsoft 365 backup sets on AhsayACB automatically use Modern Authentication.

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