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This blog post is based on a video I did a few weeks back which you can find below incase you prefer video content. In 2021 I am going to make a more conscious effort to vlog and blog about 3rd party vendors like VMware, NetApp, and Veeam and how they integrate with Microsoft Cloud services. The first series I have started this year is all around Veeam integration with Microsoft Cloud and you can catch my Introduction video below:
This specific blog will focus on ‘Backup & Recovery of Microsoft 365 with Veeam SaaS Workloads’ and I will discuss the following areas:
- Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 Overview
- Features
- Requirements
Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 Overview
This specific Veeam service is focused around backing up Microsoft SaaS workloads including: Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive and Microsoft Teams. It allows you to uniquely back up your data weekly, daily or as often as every five minutes if you wish to do so.
You can then store these backups in the location of your choice, including on-premises, in a hyperscale public cloud (Azure Storage or AWS Storage) or with a local service provider. The quick search and granular recovery of individual objects, including Microsoft Teams data – allows organisation’s to mitigate risk and allow a better service to its users so they can get their data back quickly.
Without an easily accessible copy of our data, retrieving emails for regulatory or compliance reasons can be costly, time-consuming and a major disruption to any business. When using Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, you can leverage the familiar advanced search capabilities, flexible recovery and export options to perform eDiscovery on Microsoft 365 data just as easily as you would with a traditional on-premises data backup.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 – Features
This service has some cool features, including a lot that you already find with other Veeam services, but also includes:
Multiple Deployment options:
- On-premises deployment: For customers who want to have a terrestrial backup copy of Microsoft 365 data, an on-premises deployment is the best option because it has the ability to scale-out from simple to advanced installations. This kind of deployment provides the flexibility required by an organization that uses Microsoft 365 hybrid deployments where the protected data resides within any combination of online and on-premises Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive for Business infrastructures.
- Public Cloud Deployments: For customers who have an existing footprint in the public cloud (Azure or AWS) or for those who want to host the Infrastructure in a separate Data Centre, a deployment can operate form any public cloud and provide a complete cloud-agnostic approach. Azure Marketplace requires the customer to enter the details of the Microsoft 365 tenant you want to backup, and in general, data can be directly stored into Azure Managed disks. As of Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v4, Blob storage can also be achieved through ‘extended backup repositories’ which uses Microsoft Storage offerings.
- Service Providers for a single-tenant (Exclusive mode): Veeam Cloud & Service Providers (VCSP) may offer the option to access a dedicated Veeam Backup for M365 Infrastructure that is exclusive to the clients single tenant. In this configuration, the single tenant allows the service provider to access, backup and restore content on their behalf and the customer typically uses the service provider infrastructure to protect their Microsoft 365 data and the assigned storage from the service provider as a repository for their own data. If the customer has a hybrid configuration of Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint to protect, it is required that the customer provides the FQDN of the respective on-premises Exchange and SharePoint servers to the service provider and to allow connectivity to these servers from their side. To a certain degree, the service provider for single-tenant and on-premises deployment are very similar.
- Service Providers for Multi-tenant (Shared mode): VCSP’s can host and integrate the Veeam server deployments with existing Veeam Cloud Connect Infrastructure. In this scenario, a VCSP can use a single backup server deployment in multi-tenant mode, which means all backup data and repositories are separated and the customers can use Veeam Cloud Connect gateways to securely access and recover content. In this case, the customer has no control over the backup server which is stored on the service provider side. Customers can use Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive for Business in their in-premises environment to restore data form backup stored in the service provider hosted storage. With this configuration, the service provider has visibility into all configured Microsoft 365 tenants and single tenants have no visibility into other tenant instances that share the same platform. Tenants can only access their own data from the backup jobs that the service provider has created for them.
As well as these deployment options, Veeam backup for Microsoft 365 can also backup all Exchange online objects like mail items, calendar items, contacts, notes and tasks. you can then restore directly to the mailbox, to a PST or to a different mailbox. You can also use Veeam Explorer for Exchange to browse mailboxes and recover single items. The same features are available when backing up SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Microsoft Teams.
Requirements
There are several requirements around Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, the Veeam backup server and the proxy server:
- Microsoft Exchange Org requirements: You need to ensure you have Microsoft Exchange online or Microsoft Exchange Server 2019, 2016 or 2013 (on-premises).
- Microsoft SharePoint Org requirements: You need to ensure you have SharePoint Online or SharePoint Server 2019 or 2016.
- Veeam Backup for M365 Server: There are hardware, OS and Software requirements which you can see in the table below:
| Specification | Requirement |
| Hardware | The following hardware is required: •CPU: any modern multi-core x64 processor, 4 cores minimum. •Memory: 8 GB RAM minimum. Additional RAM and CPU resources improve backup, restore and search performance. •Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 also requires a minimum size of 8GB of RAM for VMs with dynamic memory allocation. •Disk Space: 500 MB for product installation and additional free space for the configuration database (depending on the amount of organizations, jobs and sessions) and product logs. |
| OS | Only 64-bit version of the following operating systems are supported: •Microsoft Windows Server 2019, Microsoft Windows Server 2016, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft Windows Server 2012, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Microsoft Windows 10, Microsoft Windows 8.x, Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 |
| Software | The following software is required: •Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 or higher. •Windows C Runtime and Update (UCRT) in Windows. •To use PowerShell cmdlets for backup and/or restore, Windows PowerShell 2.0 or higher is required. When using Windows 2012 or 2012 R2, Windows PowerShell 2.0 Engine must be installed regardless of the current PowerShell version. |
- Veeam Backup Proxy Server: There are hardware, OS and software requirements which you an see in the table below:
| Specification | Requirement |
| Hardware | The following hardware is required: •CPU: any modern multi-core x64 processor, 4 cores minimum. •Memory: 8 GB RAM minimum. Additional RAM and CPU resources improve backup, restore and search performance. •Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 also requires a minimum size of 8GB of RAM for VMs with dynamic memory allocation. •Disk Space: 300 MB for product installation and additional free space for the configuration database (depending on the amount of organizations, jobs and sessions) and backup proxy logs. |
| OS | Only 64-bit version of the following operating systems are supported: •Microsoft Windows Server 2019, Microsoft Windows Server 2016, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft Windows Server 2012, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Microsoft Windows 10, Microsoft Windows 8.x, Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 Proxy Servers can be deployed to the following core editions: •Microsoft Windows Server 2019, Microsoft Windows Server 2016 LTSC, 1709, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 |
| Software | The following software is required: •Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 or higher. •Windows C Runtime and Update (UCRT) in Windows For a machine used as a workgroup backup proxy, the following settings are required: •The Remote registry service must run on the target machine. The service start-up type must be set to Automatic •Windows Firewall must be turned off on the target machine |
Finally you can find a video of my doing a demo of the Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 in the video below:
I hope you enjoyed this blog and find it useful. If you have any questions please leave me a comment or hit me up on my twitter handle which is @shabazdarr.
IamITgeek - aka Shabaz Darr 