What is Backup as a Service (BaaS), and how does FirstNet deliver it?

In detail: What is Backup as a Service (BaaS)

FirstNet delivers the service as a Platinum Veeam Cloud & Service Provider, with Veeam-certified engineers and architects. You get an independent offsite copy without building or running a second site, and you decide what gets protected and how long it is kept.

How FirstNet BaaS works:

• Back up: Veeam Backup & Replication runs backup or backup copy jobs on the schedule and retention you choose
• Connect securely: Veeam Cloud Connect links your environment to FirstNet over an encrypted TLS channel
• Store immutably: data lands in the vault encrypted and can be set as immutable for the retention period
• Restore on demand: recover files, application items or full VMs and servers to the original or an alternate location

It protects VMware and Hyper-V virtual machines and physical servers, which are backed up using agents. The workloads can be on-premises or in a private or public cloud. Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and laptop data are covered by a separate FirstNet cloud backup service powered by Druva, so the two are often used together.

There are two licensing tracks. On Track 1, FirstNet supplies Veeam licensing and the vault as a monthly service. On Track 2, you keep your own Veeam licences and send a backup copy job to a FirstNet offsite repository, which appears as a target in your Veeam console. Either way, Veeam ONE monitoring and reporting is included with Data Platform Premium, and GFS retention with weekly, monthly and yearly restore points is supported.

You also choose who runs it. In the self-managed model, your IT team monitors jobs, fixes failures and performs restores, while FirstNet runs the cloud repository and infrastructure. In the fully managed model, FirstNet designs and sets up the jobs, monitors them and vault capacity, remediates failures within the agreed scope, assists with or performs restores, runs periodic test restores and sends backup health reports. The managed service can be added on Track 2 as well.

The vault comes in two editions. Foundation uses locally redundant storage in one region and is the lower-cost option. Advanced typically spreads data across availability zones for business-critical data. Both are encrypted and support immutability, and the Non-Core region list can include South Africa, subject to availability.

Typical steps to go live:

• Discovery: your VM and server count, hypervisors, critical applications, retention needs and most important restore scenario
• Design: vault edition, region, retention and the operating model
• Seeding: if the first full backup will not finish over your link in time, FirstNet agrees a controlled approach, such as moving it offline
• Verification: test backups and test restores before onboarding is complete

Backup on its own reserves no compute, so restoring whole systems takes longer than failing over. If specific systems must keep running through a site outage, add Disaster Recovery as a Service on the same Veeam platform.