What’s New in Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6, Part 2: Backup Copy to Object Storage

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Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6 is the successor to Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v5. As Microsoft changed the name of its productivity cloud services, so did Veeam. But this is not the only change.

In this series of blogposts, I’ll look at the new and improved features in Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6, explain why this feature might be important to you and how to put it to good use for your organization.

In Part 1 of the series, we discussed the Microsoft Authentication Library and the Graph API for Modern Authentication scenarios. Today, let’s talk about the new functionality to use a Backup Copy job to create additional backups to object storage.

 

About object storage

Object storage is Veeam speak for storage that offers Amazon S3-compatible functionality. As you might expect, Amazon’s S3 storage qualifies as object storage, and so does storage in Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and IBM Cloud.

Veeam Backup & Replication supports object storage as a destination for long-term data storage since version 9.5 Update 4 (released in January 2019). Veeam Backup for Microsoft365 and cloud-specific offerings, such as Veeam Backup for AWS, Veeam Backup for Azure, Veeam Backup for Google Cloud Platform all support object storage.

 

Object Storage in Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365

In earlier versions of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365, support for object storage is present and recommended. It is offered as an alternative backup repository to the traditional local storage option:

VeeamObjectStorageAlternative

Object storage allows for optimal storage of Microsoft 365 data, when compared to storage on the Veeam Backup server itself. When using object storage, a mere cache is stored on the Veeam Backup server and all the data is stored in object storage with an efficiency that sometimes allowed for 4 times smaller backup repository sizes. The majority of this storage saving is on the backup (repository) server itself, as merely a cache is maintained on it. The saving is also in the actual bytes stored in the storage service.

 

What’s New for Object Storage in Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6

While Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6 still supports object storage as the main backup repository, it adds backup copy jobs to:

  • Amazon S3 Glacier
  • Glacier Deep Archive
  • Azure Archive storage

This enhances cloud object storage integrations, which already include AWS S3, Azure Blob, IBM Cloud, Wasabi and other S3-compatible providers.

lowest storage costs

Admins can quickly create a backup copy of Microsoft 365 data directly from object storage and store it in lower cost, long-term object storage with different retention period options.

Alternative storage services

Admins can also store the secondary copy with an alternative cloud provider to avoid cloud lock-in, while also creating additional data separation.

This way, organizations can more effectively achieve the 3-2-1 rule and have confidence their data is securely protected. As many organization use Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 server in Azure IaaS (or as part of a custom setup in Azure IaaS) to make backups of data in Microsoft 365, this creates dependencies on Azure, Azure DNS, the Azure Portal and (in many cases) Azure multi-factor authentication. When using AWS S3 Glacier as a backup repository in this scenario allows for complete Microsoft 365 recovery and exit scenarios toward Exchange Server on-premises.

Ultimate recovery opportunities

As you may be aware, new installations of Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 and both the Veeam Explorer for SharePoint and the Veeam Explorer for Exchange can be pointed to an object repository. A Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 can be used this way to continue to create backups. The Explorers can be used to restore to either their on-premises counterparts or to stand-alone .zip and .pst files.

And yes; S3 Glacier can be configured with immutability, too.

 

Concluding

With its Backup Copy to Object Storage functionality, Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6 offers more resiliency and adherence to the 3-2-1 rule than ever before. For organizations going this route, the storage costs involved are the lowest available (until they actually have to use the data to restore…)

Further reading

KB4241: Using Object Storage with Veeam Products
Object Storage Repositories – Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 Guide
Cloud Object Storage Deep Dive – Part One, Comparison
Cloud Object Storage Deep Dive – Part Two, Implementation
Veeam Cloud Object Storage Deep Dive – Block Size Benchmark

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