Backups from users with removed license

[peturarna]

I am a little confused about what happens to backups from users with removed license, for example employees that leave a company and Office 365 license is removed. I asked support about this and the answer is that if a Office 365 license is removed from a user, Veeam O365 will wait 31 days and then remove both VBO365 license AND backup data. According to support, this measure is in place in order to prevent Office 365 license abuse. My understanding was that only VBO365 license would be removed after 31 days but backup data would stay intact. We are quite concerned about this since we have customers with long retention policies were backup of all users should be kept for a long time regardless if they are current employees or not. Can anyone confirm how this works and what happens to backups from unlincensed users?

[Mike Resseler]

@peturarna

I'm afraid that the information you received is not exactly correct. When you remove a license from an O365 user, it is ideal that you also remove the user from the job (either manual or automatically if it is through security groups or similar). After 31 days, the license indeed comes back into your pool, but the data REMAINS until the retention is over.

[peturarna]

Great, I thought so too. Thank you for the clarification Mike!

[Mildur]

There are two possible scenarios:

Manually remove/revoke the license - Backup Data must be deleted

If you want to revoke manually a license from a user, you have first delete the backup data of this user.
—> Both tasks are done with the help of Powershell.

automatic license removal - Backup Data remains

Backup data only remains for the user, if the license is automatically removed after 31 days without processing a new backup of this user
—> Remove User from Backup Job / Delete User in Office 365

[Mike Resseler]

Indeed... Only if you revoke the license manually, you will need to get rid of the data first. Otherwise, it is being kept.

[SomewhereinSC]

Realizing this is an old post but still interested in how V for M365 operates. We have a pretty high turnover rate so I want to be sure I keep old user M365 backups..

User is added to V for M365 and backups occur daily, retention is 7 years
User leaves company, I use V for M365 to export to .PST their data
I delete the user from my M365 tenant.
What happens to the user and their data in V for M365 now?

MORE digging and found what I believe to be the answer... remove user from M365 tenant, 31 days later the user disappears from list of backed up users in the Veeam job and the license is put back in the pool, True?

[mjr.epicfail]

Interesting, in VBR world i would say you were right, however in VBM world the data is still there, for 7 years in your case.

This quote from Mildur should clarify this for you:

Backup data only remains for the user, if the license is automatically removed after 31 days without processing a new backup of this user
—> Remove User from Backup Job / Delete User in Office 365

However while the license will be revoked and put back in the pool, the backupdata will still be in your repository for 7 years unless you manually remove it via a set of PowerShell commands.

[Polina]

Hi @SomewhereinSC,

When you stop backing up a user, their data remains in the repository and will be deleted according to the retention. The VB365 license assigned to such a user will be automatically revoked in 31 days from the day when you stop backing them up.