VEEAM backup for Office365 = management / storage

[NameAlreadyTaken]

We have been using Office365 for a little while now and have decided to use VEEAM to back it up. Backup must include emails, OneDrive files and SharePoint sites (or at least document libraries). Our estate includes around 250 users spread worldwide across 5 tenants. The volume of data is at present unknown but is not likely to exceed 10TB and may be considerably less. I've spoken to our preferred reseller and they have suggested using an Azure VM to manage the backups with the backup data being stored on Azure which seems reasonable and sounds simple - but isn't as easy as you may hope. I'm OK with VEEAM itself but have no knowledge of Azure (we have on-premises AD) or virtual machines. Which of the 100+ types of Azure VM would be best for this purpose? I believe I will need Page Blob Azure storage but from what I can see that limits me to 8TB and that may not be enough - or can I simply add additional storage in the same way I could add additional capacity to a server or PC?

In short, has anybody done this and has any pointers to make my life easier? Our reseller has offered to arrange a conference call with VEEAM so that remains an option but I'm hoping some kind soul will respond here.

Thanks in advance!

[Polina]

Hi Nick and welcome to the community!

A4v2 meets the minimum requirements for VBO deployment, while the D8V3 is the officially recommended one (and you can also consider L4 as a successfully tested one).
For storage, it's better to use local disks. Plus, you may want to check out some other hints on repository sizing shared in this post.

If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks!

[NameAlreadyTaken]

Thanks Polina, I'll have a look at those different VMs. Can I ask why local disks? Although all tenants are part of the same group they are separate companies so Azure storage avoids any single company being responsible for every other company's data which is why we are considering it. Is it just 'better' to use local disks or is there a huge performance/cost/reliability issue?

[Polina]

Nick,

Azure storage is simply not supported in VBO yet; and Azure Files are limited to 5 TiB only.
For easier management of multi-tenant deployments, we suggest creating a separate repository folder for each tenant.

[NameAlreadyTaken]

Thanks for that, I was told that it was supported. Ah well, I'll need to look at using local storage then but I already know that is not the preferred option!

[Polina]

It should be some misunderstanding, I believe. We are looking into to extend repository options in the future (and your request has been heard and counted as well!), but as of now, only the following repository types are supported.

[NameAlreadyTaken]

Hmmm, Azure (and AWS) are listed there - I thought that Azure storage was accessible via an Azure VM - but will happily admit to knowing next to nothing about Azure!

[nielsengelen]

You can run VBO on AWS or Azure however we don't support blob storage so as Polina said you'll have to use local storage.

[NameAlreadyTaken]

Thanks for confirming. By local storage do you mean a virtual hard drive on the virtual machines (i.e. still on Azure but file storage rather than blob storage) or do you mean a physical drive on our own network - which is what I always think of as local storage!

[Polina]

You can use virtual hard drive.

[NameAlreadyTaken]

Brilliant! So to confirm then, I need an Azure D8V3 VM with 10tb of virtual storage and I can then create separate repositories for each tenant. I'll try to work out the reqired storage beforehand but suspect it will be a case of starting with 10tb and adjusting it from there.

Thanks for your help

[Polina]

You are very welcome! )