Requirements for rotating (USB) disks

[NogNeetMachinaal]

Hi Everyone,

As an MS(S)P, we are looking for a way to setup a demo/pre-prod environment that includes backup schedules wit rotating disks. What would be the bare minimum to make such a demo environment work?
Ideally something that includes MS365 backups and an on-prem webUI for configuration and validation?

The rotating disks mechanism is based on a USB docking station.
The MS365 setup is based on 2 accounts; each consuming around 100-Gbytes in total (i.e. mail, OneDrive and Sharepoint).
The idea is to have a weekly rotation schedule based on 4 disks each being 1 TBytes.
Meaning 1 disk is in the dock and 3 others are on a remote location.

Any suggestions?
Anything I need to be aware off?


Thank you - Will

[Mildur]

MS365 backups —> Not possible with rotated Disks as a target. The backups are stored in databases and this databases needs to be available to the software the entire time. With the entire already stored data.
Only local disks or Object Storage is supported. CIFS is experimental support only. And the requirement would be, that the cifs Share is in the same active directory domain as your vbo365 server.

If you use local disk, you can create a Backup of the Veeam Backup Office 365 Machine/VM to rotated disks with the VBR Server.

For your VBR DEMO:
1. Setup a VBR server
2. Setup a demo HyperV or vsphere environment
3. Create VMs with different workload (AD, File, Exchange, SQL, Oracle)
4. Connect your Demo HyperV or vsphere environment (or use Veeam Agents for the demo) to the vbr server
5. Setup rotated disk Backup Repo
6. Setup some Backup Jobs.

For the M365 Demo:
1. Install a vm on your demo hyperv or vsphere environment
2. Install VBO365 on top of this vm
3. Backup the data from your M365 Environment to the vm disks
4. create a Backup of this VM with your demo vbr server to the Rotated Backup Repo

At the moment, there isn‘t a supported WEB Gui for Veeam Backup Office 365 for the customers to access.

[NogNeetMachinaal]

Thank you Mildur.

The system that is currently running VBR has 3 local disks:
- the Windows system disk with VBR installed.
- a 2nd disk used for backup the two MS365 accounts and 2 clients (MAC and Win10)
- a 3rd, rotating disk connected via a dock.

The idea is to use the 2nd disk for demo-ing emergency recovery on MS365 and the 2 clients.
And use the 3rd rotating disk to demo recovery on ransomware assuming all data is encrypted.

The wish for the webUI is to make this Windows/VBR-system accessible via clients connected to the office network.

At this time, there are no plans on working with Hyper-V and/or Vsphere.
Meaning we are looking for a bare minimum setup.

Makes sense? Any suggestions?
Which licenses are needed for this setup?


Cheers - Will

[Mildur]

If it‘s only a demo environment (nonproductive data, no customer data) then I would get a NFR License for both products:
- VBR (20 licenses)
- VBO365 (10 licenses)

You will get all features (Veeam One, Veeam Backup & Replication, Veeam Backup Office 365) to build a demo for your customers. The NFR license is valid for a year and can be renewed.

From the License Agreement:

“Evaluation License” or “NFR License” mean a License Type that grants Partners and End Users the right to use the Software for a limited period stated in the License Key for evaluation or demonstration purposes only, in a non-production environment.

——————-

For your M365 Backup to the rotated Disks —> you need to create a Backup (with Veeam Agent in your case) of the Disk 2, because this is the disk where the Databases of the VBO365 product are stored.
It would be better, if you can separate the M365 Backup Target and the Agent Backup Target to different partitions or disks.
If you can create a volume level Backup of entire disk with the vbo365 databases and the config files, you will have an vbk/vib chain which are supported on rotated disk. I am not sure if File Level Backup with an Agent will work for that.

Have a look here about the 3-2-1 Rule of VBO365
https://bp.veeam.com/vbo/guide/design/3-2-1.html

[NogNeetMachinaal]

To summarize (assuming VBR is installed on a Windows 10 system):
(1) - VBO365 can run on the same system as VBR
(2) - VBO365 makes copies of the MS365 accounts; including OneDrive => goes to disk 1
(3) - Veeam agent for Win-10 and Mac make copies of the internal disks => also goes to disk 1
(4) - Veeam agent is also running on VBR-server making copies from disk 1 to these rotating USB-disks (i.e. disk 2)
(5) - All this can be 100% automated and will run *without* MS-AD in any form or shape?

Correct?

[Mildur]

(1) - VBO365 can run on the same system as VBR

Correct. But i don‘t recommend it to run it on the same server. But it will work and it‘s supported.

(2) - VBO365 makes copies of the MS365 accounts; including OneDrive => goes to disk 1

Yes, correct in your Case.

(3) - Veeam agent for Win-10 and Mac make copies of the internal disks => also goes to disk 1

Yes, but remember my recommendation:
„separate the M365 Backup Target and the Agent Backup Target to different partitions or disks.“

(4) - Veeam agent is also running on VBR-server making copies from disk 1 to these rotating USB-disks (i.e. disk 2)

Veeam Agent doesn‘t make copies. You can configure a simple backup job to backup System volume and the volume with the VBO365 Data to your rotated backup repo.

(5) - All this can be 100% automated and will run *without* MS-AD in any form or shape?

What do you want to have automated?
Backup Jobs will run as you schedule them. When you change a disk, veeam will automatically use the new disk if you have configured rotated disk correctly.
Active directory integration is not needed for this server to work.