Veeam, OST files and IMAP protocol

[JPOP]

"Deleted, temporary and page files are automatically excluded from the image to reduce the backup size."

Where does Microsoft save local contacts/calendar data in Outlook? OST file. What does Veeam exclude by default, because it assumes that the e-mail data is saved on the e-mail server? OST file. What does the IMAP protocol NOT support? Contacts/Calendar. For one of the largest backup providers, this has to be the oversight of the century. And yes, I know that you can add the inclusion manually.

[Mildur]

Hi Dino

What does Veeam exclude by default, because it assumes that the e-mail data is saved on the e-mail server? OST file.

Veeam has not decided to exclude the OST file. This exclusions are affecting every backup vendor which uses VSS to backup the machine.
The exclusion is dictated by a registry key, which is configured on every windows system by default.

If you want to backup the OST files, follow our KB articles to remove the system default exclusion:
- https://www.veeam.com/kb3181

Please check the key after Office Updates, it's possible that it gets resetted after you installed Updates for your microsoft office product.

[JPOP]

Be that as it may, am I safe to assume that there is nothing stopping you to overwrite that registry key value during installation, or at least give the user the option to do so during install? Is your everyday end-user really expected to dive deep into the VSS service documentation to see if his or her contacts are going to get backed up or not. I understand that Microsoft is the one who dictates how the VSS service functions, but Veeam is the one who ends up getting the short end of the stick once a "customer" loses its data.

[Mildur]

We had a similar request to make the default exclusion more visible in the agent backup job dialog.
I'll discuss with my team, if there is an improvement planned for a future version of veeam.

For the documentation, the end-user doesn't have to go deep into microsofts vss documentation.
We have the limitation about the *.ost file as a note in our official guide about Agent Backups:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agent ... tml?ver=50

What I'm missing on our documentation is a link to the KB article on how to remove the exclusion if needed.
I'll ask our documentation team if we can add it to the official guide.

[Bun-Bun]

It would be nice to have this exclusion configurable within the backups jobs instead of having the manually check the registry on every machine.