Unconventional retention and restore use case

[xmzmc]

Hi,

We use Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 to daily backup some Exchange Online mailboxes. The server on which VB for O365 runs stores the backup data to its local disk. The server itself is also backupped by Veeam Agent for Windows which means the O365 data is backupped two times: once through VB for O365 and once because Veaam Agent backups the whole Windows machine (I can't exclude folders in the Agent backup).

My question, to save some disk space on the server and both of the backups: can I set the retention of VB for O365 backup to 1 or 2 days? In case there's an emergency and we need to restore some older O365 data, can we just restore a specific set of folders belonging to VB for O365 through Veeam Agent for Windows specific file/folder restore? Note: restoring the whole server is not an option. Naturally it's technically possible but that's not something we want to do. So if we have to use my weird approach it can be through specific folders/files only. Is this something that is possible?

Thanks

[Mildur]

Hello xmzmc

can we just restore a specific set of folders belonging to VB for O365 through Veeam Agent for Windows specific file/folder restore?

You will need a Veeam Backup & Replication server to restore from such an Agent backup. VBR and it's explorers will allow you to open a agent backup and restore only some items or folders from the backup (Sharepoint, Teams, Mailboxes, OneDrive).
The backup from the agent must be application consistent. Application aware processing is only available in Veeam Agent for Server edition.

can I set the retention of VB for O365 backup to 1 or 2 days?

That's a bad idea. Imaging your agent job is failing for multiple days. You will have some days where you will have zero VB365 backups on your agent repository.

Note: restoring the whole server is not an option. Naturally it's technically possible but that's not something we want to do.

Restoring the entire server would allow you to continue protecting your M365 tenant. If you don't restore the entire server, you will have to run a new initial full backup, which may take a long time if you have large SharePoint sides and mailboxes.

Best,
Fabian