Last week the much anticipated release of Veeam Backup for Office 365 version 2.0 (build 2.0.0.567) went GA. This new version builds on the 1.5 release that was aimed at scalability and service providers. Version 2.0 adds support for SharePoint and OneDrive. Backup for Office 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 Office 365 is not guaranteed and it’s critical that a backup strategy is put into place.

Version 1.5 was released last October and was focused on laying the foundation to ensure the scalability requirements that come with backing up Office365 services were met. We also enhanced the automation capability of the platform through a RESTful API service allowing our Cloud & Service Providers to tap into the APIs to create saleable and efficient service offerings. In version 2.0, there is also a new set of PowerShell commandlets that have been enhanced from version 1.5.

What’s New in 2.0:

Office 365 Exchange was the logical service to support first, but there was huge demand for the ability to extend that to cover SharePoint and OneDrive. With the release of version 2.0 the platform now delivers on protecting Office 365 in its entirety. Apart from the headline new features and enhancements there are also a number of additional ones that have been implemented into Backup for Microsoft Office 365 2.0.

  • Support for Microsoft SharePoint sites, libraries, items, and documents backup and restore.
  • Support for Microsoft OneDrive documents backup and restore.
  • Support for separate components installation during setup.
  • Support for custom list templates in Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SharePoint.
  • Support for comparing items with Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange.
  • Support for exporting extended logs for proxy and controller components.

We have also redesigned the job wizard that enhances setup, search and maintaining visibility of objects.

Architecture and Components:

There hasn’t been much of a change to the overall architecture of VBO and like all things Veeam, you have the ability to go down an all in one design, or scale out depending on sizing requirements. Everything is handled from the main VBO server and the components are configured/provisioned from here.

Proxies are the work horses of VBO and can be scaled out again depending on the size of the environment being backed up. Again, this could be Office 365 or on-premises Exchange or SharePoint instances.

Repositories must be configured on Windows formatted volumes as we use the JetDB database format to store the data. The repositories can be mapped one to one to tenants, or have a many to one relationship.

The API service is disabled by default, but once enabled can be accessed via a URL to view the API commands in Swagger, or directly via the API endpoint.

Free Community Edition:

In terms of licensing, VBO is licensed per Office 365 user in all organizations. If you install VBO without a license, you will trigger Community Edition mode that allows you to have up to 10 user accounts in all organizations. This includes 1 TB of Microsoft SharePoint data. The Community Edition is not limited in time and doesn’t limit functionality.

Installation Notes:

You can download the the latest version of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 from this location. The download contains three installers that covers the VBO platform and two new versions of the Explorers. Explorer for Microsoft OneDrive for Business is contained within the Explorer for Microsoft SharePoint package and installed automatically.

  • 0.0.567.msi for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365
  • 6.3.567.msi for Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange
  • 6.3.568.msi for Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SharePoint

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.

Links and Downloads: