Since August 2016, this blog features news on Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365. We’ve been implementing this awesome Veeam product at customers ever since version 1.5 and validated the Office 365 contingency plan vision with Veeam repeatedly.
This week marks the release of version 4 of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365, so let’s look at what’s new and improved!
What’s New
Veeam lists the following improvements in Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 version 4:
Object storage support
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v4 delivers a cloud-optimized deployment option, targeted at cloud-first companies. Using object storage, these organizations can deploy Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 in a cloud-native way, by leveraging cost-efficient cloud-based object storage to store their Microsoft Office 365 data.
Popular object storage providers, including Amazon’s AWS S3, Microsoft’s Azure Blob storage and IBM Cloud, but also S3-compatible providers are supported in this release.
When organizations choose to use object storage to store backups of Microsoft Office 365 data, they can:
- Reduce costs of storage, because they only pay for what they consume
- Benefit from unlimited scalability with unlimited storage capacity
- Simplify their deployments using public cloud providers with no complex planning.
The new Cloud Credential Manager feature can be used to maintain the list of object storage accounts. This allows for easy changes of credentials without having to change the configuration of the object storage manually.
Increased Information security
Veaam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 version 4 provides added security to backups with at-rest encryption for Office 365 data in object storage. Organizations can be sure their data is secure and protected, as data in object storage is protected with AES 256-bit encryption, when this option is enabled.
The new Password Manager feature can be used to maintain passwords used for this encryption.
Faster backup performance
With Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 version 4, organizations can achieve faster backup performance for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business data. This significantly shortens the backup windows for Microsoft Office 365 data and helps deliver more easily on RTOs and RPOs.
Microsoft throttling mechanisms become a challenge when it comes to backup of SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business data. Microsoft throttles backups once you hit a certain number of requests from a single service account in a certain period, regardless of the number of backup proxies.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 version 4 leverages multiple auxiliary backup accounts to distribute the load on Microsoft Office 365 servers and significantly reduce the risk of backups throttling.
The Limit network bandwidth option in version 3 in the backup proxy properties dialogue has been updated to Throttle network traffic to in version 4 to correctly reflect this feature.
Exclude retention for contacts and calendars
This feature allows admins to protect all contacts and calendar items for as long as an associated mailbox is protected and skip these items from the retention cleanup.
Group-based targeting
Backup jobs for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 can be configured with non-mail enabled Office 365 security groups as a source for backup jobs. This applies to both synchronized groups, security groups created in Azure Active Directory and groups created in Office 365.
Enhanced reporting
The enhanced Mailbox Protection report now includes protection statistics for Office 365 Group, Public, Shared and Resource (Equipment/Room) mailboxes.
Version information
This release of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 is version 4.0.0.1345 and marks the first General Available version of the version 4 branch. It was signed off on on November 26th, 2019.
Download
Download version 4.0.0.1345 of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 here. The download weighs 29,5 MB. To protect up to 10 mailboxes and 1 TB of SharePoint data, alternatively, the free Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Community Edition can be downloaded and utilized.
Concluding
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 version 4 is a major update to the product. Recently it became clear to me that the product is of significant importance to Veeam and that it exhibits the strategy and UI for Veeam products to come.
Further reading
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v4
Object storage in NEW Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v4
Release Notes for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v4
Download Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v4
Related blogposts
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Veeam Backup for Office 365 now offers support for the Baseline Policy ‘Require MFA for Admins’
Interesting blog on whats new in veeam backup for microsoft office 365 version 4!
Keep it up, Please keep sharing.
Hi there. There is an error in your article. It should read fewer than 10 mailboxes, not less than 10 mailboxes. Mailboxes are countable, so it should be fewer.
Thanks, my friend.
To be technically correct, the 10th mailbox is included in the free Community Edition.
I changed it to 'up to 10 mailboxes'.