M365 offsite backup

[Jeggsy]

Hi all,

I was after some advice if possible with our M365 backups....

We currently use Veeam Backup V6a for backing up our mailboxes, Teams and Onedrive data. This is all run on a physical server and currently saves the backup files onto the local server storage. All nice and easy and straight forward ! ! !

What I've been looking to implement is a copy of these backups to go to one of our existing tape libraries as an offsite backup copy so we can possibly have a month-end/year-end copy of data, which is also an air-gapped backup in case we get caught at any point.

I know Veeam Backup for M365 doesn't have in-built tape support so just wondered if there is an easy solution to this ? ? ? ?

I have tried looking into this in the past and seen talk of scripts etc. and then got no further into looking at this. A few months have now passed and I really need to get on and get this sorted

If it helps we run VBR V11 for backing up our VMware environment and also Backup Exec for backing up a couple of non-virtual Windows based servers... Both sets of backup do weekend/month-end/year-end to backup tapes so wondered if either of these backup solutions could help out with this ? ? ?

We are a smallish business really and have no cloud based storage and didn't really want to go down that route at this time.

Any help or advice will be gratefully received ! !


Many thanks
Paul

[Mildur]

Hi Paul

I assume, you are using block based backup repositories instead of object storage on your physical VB365 server.
The easiest thing todo, use Veeam Agent to create a backup of the M365 physical server to your VBR repository. The backup will be a application consistent copy (a dedicated VSS Writer is used) of the VB365 backup databases. From there, you can write the agent backup to a tape.

If you don't have the storage, you could write the repository folder directly to Tape with a File to Tape Job. But you need to stop the VB365 service to have the database in a consistent state.

Thanks
Fabian

[Jeggsy]

Hi Fabian,

Many thanks for the reply All very useful info ! !

There was also going to be a question of restoring the backups from tape and how we view/restore the data if needed. It's all very well having a backup but it's no good if we can't do anything with it ! ! ! !

If we done the latter option.... What would we have to do to get a mailbox restored for example ? ? ? ? Just wondering because VBR for example, the backups are a flat file and you can just open it and do what you need to. I presume this isn't possible in this case with M365 due to it being a database file ? ? ?

Just making sure I get as much info before making a start on this.

Thanks
Paul

[Jeggsy]

Sorry... Forgot to add that we aren't using object storage for M365 !

[Mildur]

Hi Paul

If you write the repository folder directly to tape, then you have two options to restore mailbox data.
1 - Restore the entire repository folder back to a VB365 server and add it as a backup repository again. Configure the same M365 organization and you can restore the data within the VB365 console.
2 - Restore the entire repository folder back to a VBR server and use Veeam Explorer for Exchange to mount the *.adb files. This will give you access to the data in the backup.

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110

Thanks
Fabian

[Jeggsy]

Hi Fabian,

That makes sense...... I think I might have a plan then ! ! !

I'll have a play and see what happens.


Cheers
Paul

[Jeggsy]

Hi Fabian,

Been having a play and got a bit of a plan.... slightly different to what you said but it seems to make sense to me.

Create a script to stop the M365 services, copy the backup repository folder onto the local storage of the M365 server and then restart the M365 services. I can then move the copied repository folder into another location and backup to tape as well then.

Schedule this process to happen every weekend for example and should be good.

I can open the *.adb files from the copied repository folder on our M365 server and view/restore etc. from there and all seems to work as it should.

Does that make sense ? ? ? ? ? Seems a reasonable solution to me.

Is there any other files etc. that I need to backup as well or is the repository folder enough ? ? ? ? ? That was my only concern.

Many thanks
Paul

[Mildur]

Hi Paul

I can open the *.adb files from the copied repository folder on our M365 server and view/restore etc. from there and all seems to work as it should.

Yes, the VB365 can also open the adb files with the explorer. It has the same explorers installed as the VBR server.

Create a script to stop the M365 services, copy the backup repository folder onto the local storage of the M365 server and then restart the M365 services. I can then move the copied repository folder into another location and backup to tape as well then.

It's an additional step, but also works fine.

Is there any other files etc. that I need to backup as well or is the repository folder enough ? ? ? ? ? That was my only concern.

Probably this folder: C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Backup365
It contains the config and proxy database. A restore of this databases works only back to the same server (hostname). You can't restore it to a new server with a different hostname. Instead of using a Tape for this files, I suggest using a VM or Agent Backup job with application aware processing to protect the VB365 application and OS Drive. This allows you to restore the entire VB365 server with it's application configuration.

Thanks
Fabian

[Jeggsy]

Just a quick update on this....

I've created a script and managed to get the Veeam services to stop, copy across all the backup repository data and then re-start the Veeam services. This script is scheduled to run every weekend so I now have a secondary copy of the backup data.

I have then managed to schedule a separate backup job to come along and backup to disk the copy of the Veeam backup data and also copy to tape too.

As a belt and braces, part of the script will copy the C:\ProgramData\Veeam\ folder too so this database data will be consistent with the actual backups. This folder will also get backed up onto disk and tape as well.

Touch wood.... all seems to hang together and does everything we need it too ! !

I know it's been requested before on the forum but perhaps adding some extra functionality to M365 to allow backups/archiving to other locations or other media such as tape ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

Anyway... many thanks Fabian for your help ! !

Cheers
Paul

[Mildur]

Hi Paul

I've created a script and managed to get the Veeam services to stop, copy across all the backup repository data and then re-start the Veeam services. This script is scheduled to run every weekend so I now have a secondary copy of the backup data.

I have then managed to schedule a separate backup job to come along and backup to disk the copy of the Veeam backup data and also copy to tape too.

You can use the veeam agent backup job directly on the physical server to backup the VB365 data without stopping the services and using a script, as I wrote in my first post. Much easier and no manual scripting. Any reason why you don‘t want to use that?

I know it's been requested before on the forum but perhaps adding some extra functionality to M365 to allow backups/archiving to other locations or other media such as tape ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

If you use Object Storage (recommended storage solution for VB365) as a backup target, you can use backup copy jobs to copy the data to AWS S3 Glacier or Azure Blob Archive.

Thanks
Fabian

[merku]

Hi All,
is it possible to do a copy on object storage if I have as main destination of my backup a local disk mapped on another proxy?

Thanks

[Mildur]

Hi Mercurio

No, that‘s not possible in Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365. Source backup job must already be on Object Storage.

But you may use Veeam Agent or a VM backup job with Veeam Backup & Replication to backup that entire proxy to Object Storage.

Best,
Fabian