Tape backup Office365

[ThurlBailey]

Dear all

We would like to export Office 365 backup on tape. Since the product still not support Tape backup, we will use Veeam B&R.
What it needs to be exporton tape to guarantee restore? Repository only or there's a databatase somewhere on the Veeam 365 Backup VM that have to be backup as well?
What about the restore from tape procedure? Has anyone already tested it?

Thank you for your help

Case # 03270025

[Dima P.]

Hello and welcome to the community ThurlBailey.

Repository only or there's a databatase somewhere on the Veeam 365 Backup VM that have to be backup as well?

May I ask what's the repository for your VBO backups? Is it possible to take a VM backup of this repository and then place suck backup to tape?

What about the restore from tape procedure?

Whenever we speak about entire VM backup to tape such backup requires to be staged to the repository prior performing item recovery. Once backup is staged you can do application item restores from the backup. That's said, entire VM restore from tape restore is also supported (so you can restore your VM directly to infrastructure without staging the backup file).

[ThurlBailey]

May I ask what's the repository for your VBO backups? Is it possible to take a VM backup of this repository and then place suck backup to tape?

The repository is a shared folder on a physical Windows server appliance . I can take a backup on tape of the shared folder via VeeamB&R

Whenever we speak about entire VM backup to tape such backup requires to be staged to the repository prior performing item recovery. Once backup is staged you can do application item restores from the backup. That's said, entire VM restore from tape restore is also supported (so you can restore your VM directly to infrastructure without staging the backup file).

Since I can't have a backup on tape of the VeaamO365 VM and the respository at the same time, I could stage repository from tape backup (renaming the current repository folder to not loose the content) and then perform an item restore.
Is this supported or do I need any data from the original VeeamO365 Vm that performed the backup?

[Dima P.]

ThurlBailey,

If that's a shared folder within Windows machine I'd rather backup the entire machine via Veeam B&R vm backup job and then use backup to tape functionality to place such backup file to tape. Whenever you are going to perform a restore you would need to restore vm backup from tape to VBR repository (any storage works) and preform entire vm restore from this backup. Once done, you need to import the VBO backup to your VBO console. From what I read you can import the VBO backup file without any configuration backup but I'll leave this question open for VBO folks. Cheers!

[Mike Resseler]

@Dima is correct. In fact, once you have that VM back in your VBR repository, you don't even need to restore it back to your infrastructure, you can use ILR straight from that VM backup. VBR will recognize that it is a VBO backup and give you the needed options for restoring item-level objects

[THagen]

It's hard for me to see how this solution is acceptable. We have a rather large organisation and the disk space required to backup the data twice before getting it to tape is obviously doubled. The tape backup is for historical purposes only, so the argument that it's easy to restore from the VBR repository is not really that valid.

VBO works well to run the O365 backups, and looks good when it comes to restoring the current data. As it looks now we need to look elsewhere to get the rest of the job done.

[Polina]

Hi THagen and welcome to the community!

Using VBR to send O365 backups to tape is more a workaround. VBO is a relatively "young" solution focused on backup in the first place. However, your vote for the backup to tape feature is counted.

Thank you for the feedback and keep it coming!

[KSCS]

Hi there - Long time Veeam user (Since 2009!)

As I understand it, if I wish to backup our 365 to an existing Veeam B&R Repro I can create a VM to install Office365 Backup on, set it up with Snapshot based backup with a 7 day retention schedule & then use Veeam B&R to backup that VM - Then it can be stored on the repro in line with existing retention & transferred to tape backup? In theory this then gives us the ability to restore from any day/month/year like normal from tape if need be.

Is this correct?

[Polina]

Hi KSCS,

Thank you for being with Veeam and welcome to the Community!

That's correct - if you make an application-aware backup of a VBO365 VM with Veeam B&R, you will be able to send those backups to tape and then restore O365 data using FLR.
Please see the above discussion for more details.