How Does Exchange Backup My Data?

One frequently asked question is “How does Exchange back up my data?” People ask this question for a number of reasons.

1.  Concerned with how their data will be recovered if there is a failure in the environment
2. They may be wondering how to recover their data if it gets deleted accidently

There are many things that can disrupt service availability:

• hardware failure
• natural disasters
• human error

To ensure that your data is always available, our Exchange infrastructure uses advanced technology to ensure that services continue with minimal interruption and data is up-to-date, even when unexpected events occur.

But what happens if users accidently (or purposefully) deletes data from their mailboxes?

Exchange provides a number of features that can help you restore  that data:    

• Deleted Item Recovery. Users can restore items that have been deleted from any email folder. Here’s how the process works: When an item is deleted, it is kept in a user's Deleted Items folder. After an item has been removed from the Deleted Items folder, the item is kept in a Recoverable Items folder—where it can be restored by an administrator—for an additional 14 days before being permanently removed. (Please note that if an administrator has placed a user’s mailbox on legal hold, purged items are retained indefinitely and the 14-day window does not apply.)   
• Deleted Mailbox Recovery. When an Exchange mailbox is deleted, its contents are recoverable for 14 days.
• Single Item Recovery (Rolling Legal Hold). Sometimes an organization wants to preserve users’ mailbox contents for archiving and eDiscovery purposes, but only for a specific amount of time. The Single Item Recovery feature is a great way to accomplish this. It uses the same mechanism that legal hold uses to permanently
  preserve original copies of items that have been modified or deleted, but provides “rolling legal hold” capabilities that allow you to define a set period of time. Administrators can set the period by extending the Single Item Recovery retention period to any length of time by contacting the support.

NOTE: Not all plans support Single Item Recovery and some plans limit the length of the hold.