Restore and Recovery Options for Exchange Online as of 11/16/2020:
Point-in-Time Restore: Not Available. Exchange Online is SaaS. There is no access to database or the log files in Exchange Online. 3rd Party solutions may produce experiences close to Point-in-Time restores, but its built on logic that uses EWS or other front end client access protocols, not necessarily connecting to the raw database and log files.
RetainDeletedItemsFor: 30 Days (max). When email items are hard-deleted from the mailbox, the items will be stored in the Deletions Recoverable Items folder where the items will be recoverable via OWA or Outlook using “Recover Deleted Items” functionality.
Holds:
– Litigation Hold: When enabled, all items are protected and nothing will be purged from the mailbox
– Compliance/InPlace Holds: When enabled, only items that match specific criteria will be protected and not purged from the mailbox.
SCC Retention Policy: Email can be protected for a certain period of time based on the Received date of the email item.
Lagged Copy for Logical Corruption: A passive database copy will be a lagged copy where it will delay processing log files for a certain time . In the event of logical database corruption, this passive database copy can be used to prevent further corruption to the local database copy
Soft-Deleted Mailbox or 3rd party restore in Exchange On-Premises (previous migrated/on-boarded to Exchange Online): If you recently migrated to Exchange Online, you may be able to access a soft-deleted version of the mailbox using Exchange On-Premises tools and any third party backup software that was used prior to the migration.
Single Item Recovery: Single Item Recovery is enabled by default in Exchange Online. If a user was to attempt to purge out of their “Recover Deleted Items” (Deletions Dumpster folder), than the message would still be retained for the “RetainDeletedItemsFor” period before it is purged.
Note: Folder structure is not recoverable, only email items.
Ex-Shell 