Restoring VBO from VBR

[mchadwick-RP]

Hi There,

After reading some threads and doing some research. I see the best way to achieve the proper "3-2-1" backup methodology with VBO is to backup the VBO VM. We are using VBR to backup the VBO VM and while everything works fine, I'm wondering what do restores look like?

Should I look to restore the VM entirely for a specific date/time I need the data at?
Can I use the VBR explorers to restore individual items to the original storage?
Is the expectation to use VBO for an O365 data restores and instead only use the VBR copy in emergency scenarios where the VBO server is offline?

[Gostev]

Hi, yes you can use VBR explorers directly on a VBO VM backup to restore individual items in emergency scenarios where the VBO server is offline.

[MCU_Networking]

I would like to request an expansion of the details, because I have a similar question and I haven't found the answer yet.


If I backed up the Veeam for Office 365(VBO) server with Veeam Backup & Replication(VBR), how would I go about restoring an email from 1 year ago?


I just tried today and starting getting different errors in 3 different scenarios. So I am trying to figure out if I did it wrong or if it is not possible.
I read this forum thread here and this one: "veeam-backup-for-office-365-f47/seconda ... 53819.html" which made me think what I was trying was possible.
When I attempt a App Level restore from the VBR Console on the VBO(Server 2016) server I get the following error:
"Cannot start process because a file name has not been identified"

When I attempt a App Level restore using VBR Console on the VBR(Server 2012R2) server, I get the following error:
"Failed to open some of the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 databases."

When I attempt a App Level restore using VBR Console on my PC(Win 10), I get the following error:
"Unable to mount disk: unsupported disk type"

I do have a case open 05303868, not trying to hijack this one or anything, but the VBR tech and I were not able to get any of the 3 situations to work. So I am going to try some random things on my side and he was going to involved a VBO tech.




My use cause for using VBR to backup VBO would be to be more specific in my Archiving retention and say keep 1 year's worth of weeklies and 2 year's worth of yearlies like I can with VBR CopyJobs.
However, I am getting all sorts of errors when trying to perform an application level item restore. I can restore file level from the VBO backup on VBR/

[Mildur]

Use instant recovery for the vbo 365 backup server and open the backups with the explorers from inside the instant vm recovery session. That‘s always worth to try.
If backups can be opened in the instant recovery session, your backups are fine and the vbo databases are consistent in the backup.

Unable to mount disk: unsupported disk type

Do the vbo365 disk use refs as the filesystem? Or NTFS with dedup?

For the other errors, please keep working with support. It‘s difficult over the forum to analyze technical issues.

[Mike Resseler]

please keep working with support indeed. What I fear is the mismatch in ESE functionality between the server 2k16 and 2k12. I think that is where we should look into

[MCU_Networking]

Ending up getting it to work by running VBR Console on a 2016 Server with Exchange 2016 installed on it. Mike Resseler, that is what the tech was thinking and my home work over the weekend was to get to a point to prove this (aka installing 2016). So it seemed to work because it has the Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 exe.dll file located at: C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin\ese.dll. We could see in the logs it was looking for it but couldn't find it. The logs were not explicit though, as it didn't mention "/bin/ese.dll" and it stopped after v15. I believe that either the error message needs to improve from Veeam's side in the GUI when presented, or the documentation should mention it somewhere. If the documentation does and I missed it, please let me know.

To anyone who comes across this, I was indeed able to restore application level items, like an email, from a Veeam Backup & Replication backup of the Veeam Backup for Office 365 server, directly from the Veeam Backup & Replication Console.

[Mike Resseler]

It does say it here: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbo36 ... tml?ver=50

But I agree that might need to be a bit more enhanced to make it more clear...