Restoring all items in a mailbox (bulk)

[dresicz]

hey folks,
how does VB for M365 handle the restore of complete mailboxes? I know the competition has some troubles when it comes to restoring to an "image" of how the structure looked in outlook as of the last backup. scenarios could be: lost, defect mailbox, human error, what have you. Applies to Exchange hybrid and EO.

Main issue here is that after a bulk restore we find most mail items in the inbox and also (!) in the folder where the user finally moved it to. Apparently the reason for that is a limitation, if you will, of the app registration API used to backup: all Exchange items have a unique id. Moving mail items from inbox to folder changes that id, as it really is a delete and create process. Subsequent backups hence find a new id and back up that item again (now in folder x). Now, of course oftentimes new mails in the inbox are backed up before they are moved. And as backups are incremental forever, no regular indexing takes place.

Is Veeam different? Can it restore a mailbox to state it was in after the last backup? If so, how does it overcome above the mentioned limitation? Does it e.g. create a new index every backup?

All thoughts are appreciated.

[Mike Resseler]

Hey Dresicz,

We work a bit differently (at least if I understand what you described well)

We look after created / modified parameter. So in the case of your description of a move, we see this indeed as a changed item. When you restore in bulk, we will restore all items to the location / folder of that specific restore point. So in the case somebody moves an item during the day (in between backups) and then you would do a restore from the previous restore point, in that case the mails in the inbox that have been moved after the backup will be shown in the inbox again. Makes sense?

[dresicz]

Hey Mike,
thanks for your reply. When you say you look after created/modified date, are you referring to retention criteria (which makes sense, item level retenetion...)? Or rather, that Veeam in fact keeps track of individual objects as they traverse from inbox to different folders? You also say that you "see this as a changed item", which sounds like Veeam is also prone to lose track and backs up the individual object again, once moved away from the inbox.
Also I don't understand where "restore point" comes into play here.

So if you can confirm that Veeam is able to restore all Exchange Online items only once (and to where they resided by the time of last backup), that would be helpful.

Thanks again.