Veeam VBM (v6)

Item-level retention (object related)

• Act like archive software

• Items will be deleted if they were not created or modified f.e. within the last 3 years

Snapshot-based retention

• Act like a backupfile

• f.e. all files will be kept for 3 years

• Items will be deleted only if they are expired and do not belong to a recovery point

"A backup repository will be extended with the specific object storage and backups will be off-loaded directly to object storage. 

Once you configure a backup repository to offload data, it will consist of two parts:

1. Local folder, which contains metadata (JET DB)

2. Object storage, which contains the metadata and backups

When the backup job starts, the data first goes to the local cache, which is only stored in RAM memory, and afterwards is sent directly to the object storage. In the local cache we store the metadata to present the object directly via Veeam Explorer, but the content of the object itself (email body, attachment, appointment info, file contents…) is stored in the object storage.

Additionally, when you perform a restore via a Veeam Explorer you will get a notification if you are accessing data from Object Storage to warn you about potential costs. Below you can see how it looks for the Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange when you open a restore point."

Non-Technical Information...

• Microsoft O365 Email Ransomcloud Demo with Kevin Mitnick (8:10 video)

• On the 12th day of the Rackspace email disaster, it did not give to me... 

• [Heads-up] Unusual Ransomware Strain Encrypts Cloud Email Real-time VIDEO

• Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6 Data Recovery Scenarios

• Enloe thwarts a ransomware attack and speeds data restore by up to 99% with Veeam 

• IT blunder permanently erases 145,000 users' personal chats in KPMG's Microsoft Teams deployment

• Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 - Demo Video

• Protection against Ransomware Attacks, Credential Stuffing and Password Spray Attacks

• Why Protect Office 365 for Healthcare?

• BEC - Business Email Compromise

• FBI Business Email Compromise

• Mysterious bug is deleting Microsoft Teams, SharePoint files

• Veeam: Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v5 – Security Notifications for Restore operations

• Getting Selective with Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 

• 8 lessons from an Office 365 backup customer

• Veeam: Detailed HTML Daily Report for Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 is now available – Community Project

• Exchange, SQL, Active Directory – How to easily recover your data?

• Measure-VBOOrganizationFullBackupSize: The operation has timed out

• Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 5.0 User Guide V5

• What’s new in Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v5

• Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 retention explained 

• VBO-365 Portal: A nice project just behind the corner – Part 2

• VBO-365 Portal: A nice project just behind the corner – Part 3

• Veeam: How to create additional administrators to access the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Console 

• Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v5 Upgrade - The Hard Way 

• How to lower the cost of Office 365 backups with Veeam and Wasabi hot cloud storage 

• Veeam: How to check your Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 Application Certificate Expiration date

V5 Scalability and performance enhancements...
Addressing the needs of larger and growing organizations, version 5 delivers multiple architectural enhancements and processing optimizations to provide better scalability, simplified management and faster backups and restores.

• 5X backup infrastructure scalability increase is delivered with the support of up to 50 remote proxies per a single backup server.

• Workgroup environment support addresses the needs of cloud deployments and releases the domain requirement for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 components. Additional remote proxies can now be deployed in workgroups, allowing for easier management and scaling up your backup infrastructure.

• Faster population of objects in the backup job wizard reduces to minutes the time for creating or editing backup jobs via the UI for Office 365 organizations with more than 100,000 users, groups and sites. Additionally, searching for individual objects is now performed directly on the Azure AD side, which significantly speeds up finding a specific user, group or site you want to protect.

• 2X faster backup data migration to object storage from local repositories.

• Faster backup and more efficient digesting of massive SharePoint Online sites achieved through parallel processing of individual lists and improved handling of failed items within lists.

• Faster management operations and improved UI responsiveness for larger-scale deployments achieved with the optimized communication between backup infrastructure components.

• Thousands of backup repositories, OneDrive accounts and Exchange items represented within seconds with the optimized RESTful API calls.

• The information on space used on thousands of backup repositories is delivered within seconds with the optimized PowerShell cmdlets.

Technical Design and Architecture...

• Azure Marketplace: Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365

• AWS Marketplace: Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365

• Best Practice Guide for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365

• 25 Unique Ways to restore with Veeam - PDF

• Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Calculator by Benedikt Däumling

• Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 - Quick Installation Video

• How to configure Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365

• How to recover deleted emails in Office 365

• Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v5 - 17:17 video by Michael Cade 

• Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v5 - Security Notifications for each Restore operation

• Deep dive on Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v5: Now with Microsoft Teams backup 

Technical Details...

• How to configure Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 - 9:18 video by Joseph Monahan 

• Changing datastores from item-level retention to snapshot based retention

• Grafana Dashboard for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 by Jorge de la Cruz 

• Veeam Backup for O365 - MFA Setup

Looking for the Perfect Dashboard: InfluxDB, Telegraf, and Grafana – Part XL (Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 – Restore Audit)

• Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Complete Permissions - Veeam Knowledge Base

• Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 5.0 Required Permissions - Veeam Help Center

• Veeam Backup for O365 - MFA Setup - TheRedHeadEngineer

• Veeam Backup for O365 - MFA Setup part 2 - Legacy Protocols - TheRedHeadEngineer

• Add Org to Veeam Backup for o365 with Modern Auth and MFA 

Posted: 07 May 2021 08:51 AM PDT

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 is subject to throttling rules placed on SharePoint sites. These rules limit traffic speed for any item downloaded per user from any SharePoint site or OneDrive for Business on Microsoft servers. These throttling rules generally go unnoticed in day-to-day use of the cloud product but can drastically limit backup recovery point objectives. Veeam has a solution to this problem in the way of Auxiliary backup accounts. 

Auxiliary backup accounts provide a form of load balancing from SharePoint and OneDrive for Business servers through multiple Microsoft account invitations. Since each account can generally back up at the maximum defined throttling speed, the overall backup job completes exponentially faster. This will also speed up the backup of data that resides on SharePoint in the backend, like Microsoft Teams. Creating multiple user accounts in Microsoft Office 365 and then adding them to the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 console can take time and patience. It is also found when someone needs to do a repetitive task by hand; things like security might be overlooked to save time, like setting each account with the same password. 

All of these points bring us to the reason for this blog, a PowerShell script that makes as many accounts as you want and sets a secure, unique password for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 version 5 for each account. This script was built for basic authentication. If the organization requires modern app-only authentication, then mitigating throttling Microsoft Azure AD applications will be needed. More information can be found in our user guide.

Getting started...

Before creating any accounts, there are a few things to consider. The script will need to be run from the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 server so that the users can be added to the console. When creating users to add into the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 console, they will be added via a security group, so the account used to run the script will need to be an administrator account in Office 365 with enough permissions to create users and groups then add them to that group. In the script, the number of accounts can be configured to whatever is needed for the organization. The script can also be re-run with increased numbers to add more users if needed. It is the recommendation to start at eight accounts per proxy added to the console for the organization, then monitor for any signs of continued throttling in the job. Examples of signs you’re still being throttled are getting 503 errors in the logs or if the console jobs seem to process significantly faster at the start of the job run then slow down as time goes on. 

If there are still signs of OneDrive for Business or SharePoint sites being throttled in the job, then increase the number of accounts in increments of eight until the issue is resolved. The script has been designed to follow this model with the variables. The $ProxyCount only needs the number of proxies added in the console, and the math will be done in the background. If additional accounts are needed, then use the variable.

How to run the script...

Before running the script below, three variables must be filled in. 

1. $ProxyCount will signify the number of proxies added to the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 console used for that organization. 

2. $AzureAdmin needs to be a Microsoft 365 account admin with add and modify permissions for users and groups. 

3. $VBOOrg is the organization’s name as it appears in the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 console. 

If you need additional accounts, use the $AdditionalAccountSets variable. With this variable, you only need to increase the number by one increment to get an additional eight accounts. For example, if you increase the number to 10, the script will create an additional 80 accounts.

Create Auxiliary Backup Accounts script.

How to remove the accounts

There are many reasons to need the removal of data, including users, from Microsoft Office 365. Below is a script that will clear all accounts and the group created from the script above. These users will be removed from both the active user list and the recycling bin. The only variable that needs to be filled out in this script is $AzureAdmin for the account used to delete the users.

Remove Auxiliary Backup Accounts script.

Conclusion...

Throttling from Microsoft can be a significant cause of job performance issues when processing SharePoint sites and OneDrive for Business objects, but adding backup auxiliary accounts can help alleviate this bottleneck and can be made easy by using the scripts mentioned above. If adding more accounts does not give a noticeable difference in backup efficiencies, then the problem might not be Microsoft throttling. Many other factors can also affect performance, like under-provisioned resources on the server or proxies, slow storage processing for the backup and network constraints, including internet connection. 

Check out our Deployment Guide or the Best Practice Guide to ensure the components are appropriately provisioned and open a case with support if the issues persist. Please keep in mind that troubleshooting scripts is outside the support contract. Alternatively, Veeam has a great community on the forums to help with any Veeam-related script issues.

To get started with Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365, begin a FREE 30-day trial today!

The post How to automate adding Veeam Backup <em>for Microsoft Office 365</em> Auxiliary accounts appeared first on Veeam Software Official Blog.

Jorge de la Cruz - Senior Analyst at Veeam Software 

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