Backup for Microsoft 365 v6 ...Self Service, Object Storage Enhancements and More!

Great news this week, with the GA release of Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 (VBM) version 6.0 (6.0.0.367). This new version again builds on the 5.0 release that added Team support as well as further enhancements around performance, reporting and APIs. Version 6.0 is focused on the addition of a self service portal, as well as backup copy functionality to lower cost Object Storage platforms and a number of other top customer requests. You will also notice a slight tweak to the name of the product to fall in line with Microsoft rebranding the service to remove the Office name.

What’s New in 6.0:

Apart from the headline new feature around the Self Service Portal and Backup Copy to Object Storage, there are a lot of key scalability and performance enhancements that address the needs of larger and growing organizations and Veeam Cloud Service Providers. VBM v6 delivers multiple architectural enhancements and processing optimizations resulting in better backup and restore rates.

Self-service restore portal, a web-based portal that allows end users and/ or helpdesk staff to restore Microsoft 365 data
Backup copy from object storage to low-cost object storage for long-term retention
Automatic update, which installs new critical updates and patches for Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 in the background
A new ISO image installer that makes installing and updating VB365 and its components much easier
Support for renamed SharePoint Online tenants
SharePoint restore to another location
Full support for multi-geo tenants
Enhanced per-job logging

Self Service Portal for Service Providers and Enterprises alike!:

No doubt that one of the biggest requests for our Backup for Microsoft 365 product since it was released has been the desire for user driven self service restores. While the request had been strongly from our Cloud and Service Provider partners, our Enterprise customers have also been requesting this feature and would also benefit greatly from it making its way into the product

Preview Post – https://anthonyspiteri.net/quick-preview-microsoft-365-self-service-portal/

The ability for end users to recover their own emails is obviously the first benefit of having the self-service portal second to this administrators can come in or operators can come in and do restores for organisation level users. Not only is the portal available via the UI but also there is a number of additional API endpoints that can be leveraged by our service providers or enterprises alike to leverage the features and functionality of the V6 portal and build them into their own portal offerings.

Architecture and Components:

We have significantly updated the high level architectural diagram and it’s pretty busy! That said it shows off the growing flexibility of the platform and multiple options for backup and recovery of Microsoft 365 data.

There has been some changes to the minimum hardware requirements whereby it is now recommended that 8 cores and 16GB of RAM are used as the minimum for v6, which is up from 4 cores and 8GB of RAM in v5. Please bear this in mind when doing the initial job run after upgrade as there is some work that needs to be done to update database objects and the more resources assigned to the VBM server.

With Object Storage for a repository, we keep only metadata and a cache with all backup data located in Object Storage. Because multiple Repositories can be created and mapped to one or more users, there is flexibility in being able to have a choice of local storage or one or more Object Storage platforms. When using object storage, data can be protected with optional encryption at-rest.

Proxies are the work horses of VBM and can be scaled out again depending on the size of the environment being backed up. Again, this could be Microsoft 365 or on-premises Exchange or SharePoint instances. These proxies can now be configured standalone and not on a Domain, allowing for more DMZ design options.

Installation and Upgrade Notes:

You can download the the latest version of Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 from this location. The download is now ISO based and contains a more streamlined install process that handles all the components at the same time. You can see below, that it handled my existing v5 to v6 upgrade in the one go, which is a lot more efficient than the previous upgrade methodology and seperate installers per component.

To finish off…It’s important to read the release notes here as there are a number of known issues relating to specific situations and configurations and some gotchas with upgrades. It’s important reading before any upgrade or fresh install.

Backup for Microsoft 365 has been a huge success for Veeam with a growing realisation that SaaS based services require an availability strategy. The continuity of data on SaaS platforms like Microsoft 365 is not guaranteed and it’s critical that a backup strategy is put into place. The market has now been well and truly educated on the need for protecting Microsoft 365 data and we continue to lead the way by leading the market in this space… v6 will further solidify our momentum in the space!