How to Take Backup and Restore Office 365 Mailboxes | Veeam

Office 365 is a SaaS solution by Microsoft. Many organization uses office 365 all around the globe. There are 24.9 million total subscribers as of that last report. This confirms that many people are using Office 365 to help manage their businesses.

Do we need a backup for a SaaS solution like Office 365? I think, yes, we do. In this post, we will see How to Take Backup and Restore Office 365 Mailboxes.

Veeam Office 365 Backup & Restore Video tutorial here.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 is a solution that stores mailbox items from Office 365 Online organization to an offline backup repository. Office 365 admin can restore single or multiple emails using Veeam Explorer.

The restoration of these items (mailboxes, folders, messages, tasks, contacts, and so on) can be possible via Veeam Explorer. We have an option to get a FREE temporary license for Veeam Backup for Office 365.

This temporary license is available for the first six months. Recovered e-mail can be saved as a file, e-mailed as an attachment, or exported as a PST file.

Content of this post

  • Do We Require Office 365 Backup?
  • How to Install Veeam Backup Office 365
  • Connect to Office 365 with Veeam Backup?
  • Create Backup Job for Office 365 Backup
  • Advanced Search Option – Veeam Explorer
  • How to Restore Deleted Office 365 Mails?
  • Veeam Backup Office 365 Troubleshooting
  • Veeam Backup Office 365 PowerShell Commands
How to Take Backup and Restore Office 365 Mailboxes
O365 – How to Take Backup and Restore Office 365 Mailboxes

Do We Require Office 365 Backup?

What happens if the user accidentally deletes data from office 365 mailboxes? Office 365 service provides several options for Deleted item recovery. Manual recovery from Deleted Items is also possible.

Following are the retention policies offered by Microsoft. But, I don’t think Microsoft provides granularity in backing up and recovering the emails. Veeam Backup for Office 365 has loads more granularity in comparison.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 provides recovery options like recovered e-mail can be saved as a file, e-mailed as an attachment, or exported as a PST file. I don’t think Microsoft provides all these options.

How to Install Veeam Backup Office 365

Download Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 from here. It contains 2 MSI files VeeamBackupOffice365_1.5.0.1099.MSI & VeeamExplorerExchange_9.6.0.1099.MSI. We need to install VeeamBackupOffice365 and then VeeamExplorerExchange.

The installation is straightforward, and there is no prerequisite when we install these on Windows Server 2016. You can see more details in the video tutorial here.

Once Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365, You have three shortcuts on your Windows Server 2016.

  • Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365
  • Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange
  • Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 connect to…

Connect to Office 365 with Veeam Backup?

In the background, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 uses the Power-Shell command to connect to Office 365. To join Office 365 from Veeam Backup, Click on the Add Organization” button. There are 3 Organization deployment types available for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365

  • Microsoft Office 365
  • Hybrid Deployment
  • On-Prem Microsoft Exchange

I selected Microsoft Office 365 to add my organization’s mailbox to the Veeam backup solution. The “Microsoft Office 365 connection settings” page has multiple region options like Default, China, US Govt, and US Govt-DOD.

To complete the ADD ORGANIZATION wizard, you need to enter the Office 365 admin username and password. You can see more details in the video tutorial here.

How to Take Backup and Restore Office 365 Mailboxes
How to Take Backup and Restore Office 365 Mailboxes

Following are the Veeam Backup for Office 365 Connection Parameters

  • Connect to EWS
  • Connect to Power-Shell
  • Check View-Only Configuration Role
  • Check View-Only Recipients Role
  • Check Application Impersonation Role
  • Check Role Management Role
  • Check Organization Customization
  • Check Organization Configuration Role
  • Enable Organization Customization

Create Backup Job for Office 365 Backup

Click on the Backup button to create and schedule a backup job for Office 365 mailboxes. We have an option to select individual mailboxes and all the mailboxes as part of the Backup job wizard. I have chosen one office 365 mailbox as part of the backup job.

We also need to select the Backup proxy and backup repository as part of the backup job wizard. Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 has granular schedule options. This backup job is a reoccurring incremental backup task.

The backup job GUI gives an excellent experience. It provides all the details LIVE in the Veeam Backup for Office 365 GUI. What was the transfer rate of the backup job etc.? There is three segregation on the backup job status page. 1. Status, 2. Data and  3. Summary.

How to Take Backup and Restore Office 365 Mailboxes
Backup – How to Take Backup and Restore Office 365 Mailboxes

Veeam Backup Job has the following actions

  • Created Backup Job
  • Connected to organization
  • Found One mailbox
  • Processing mailbox:[email protected]
  • Transferred:400 MB (4300 items) at 639.3 KB/s (7 items/s)
  • Job finished at 14-10-2017 10:52:00

Advanced Search Option – Veeam Explorer

Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange provides loads of granular options with Advanced Search mailboxes. Using Veeam Explorer, we can search mailboxes with advanced find options. Veeam Explorer offers many search criteria.

  • Category
  • Field
  • Condition
  • Value

How to Restore Deleted Office 365 Mails?

Recover the Office 365 mailboxes and individual emails. Veeam Explorer provides options to export office 365 mailbox to PST file. Also, there are other options to save personal mail to “.MSG” files.

You can also send recovered emails to another email id. You can see more details in the video tutorial here.

Following are the options recovery options available in Veeam Explorer

Veeam Backup Office 365 Troubleshooting

C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Backup365\Logs is the place where you can find the log files of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365. Veeam.Archiver.Proxy_2017_10_14_10_31_41.log file contains the details about the Database connectivity. It also includes connectivity errors.

  • 14-10-2017 10:31:41 5 (2904) Loading ESE library: C:\Windows\system32\esent.dll…
  • 14-10-2017 10:31:41 5 (2904) Module file version: 10.0.14393.0 (rs1_release.160715-1616)
  • 14-10-2017 10:31:41 5 (2904) Resolving DLL entry points…
  • 14-10-2017 10:31:41 5 (2904) Setting maximum number of instances to 1024…
  • 14-10-2017 10:31:41 5 (2904) Creating ESE instance VEEAM_ARCHIVER_PROXY_9333c395-7a2b-43da-b776-295b574b1099…
  • 14-10-2017 10:31:41 5 (2904) Setting instance parameter MaxVerPages to 1073741824…
  • 14-10-2017 10:31:41 5 (2904) Setting instance parameter MaxOpenTables to 15000…
  • 14-10-2017 10:31:41 5 (2904) Setting instance parameter MaxSessions to 1000…
  • 14-10-2017 10:31:41 5 (2904) Initializing ESE instance…
  • 14-10-2017 10:31:42 5 (2904) Setting ESE maximum cache size to 2147248128 bytes…
  • 14-10-2017 10:31:42 5 (2904) Creating database: C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Backup365\ProxyDb\config.edb…
  • 14-10-2017 10:31:42 5 (2904) Creating database schema…

How Veeam Backup Office 365 can use in a Programmatic way?

Using Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 PowerShell Toolkit, we can automate the Veeam Backup Microsoft Office 365 tool.

How to Take Backup and Restore Office 365 Mailboxes
PowerShell – How to Take Backup and Restore Office 365 Mailboxes

Following are the PowerShell command Lets available for Veeam Backup Office 365 mailboxes:-

Name
Add-VBOJob
Add-VBOOrganization
Add-VBOProxy
Add-VBORepository
Connect-VBOServer
Disable-VBOJob
Disconnect-VBOServer
Enable-VBOJob
Get-VBOEmailSettings
Get-VBOFolderExclusions
Get-VBOHistorySettings
Get-VBOJob
Get-VBOJobSession
Get-VBOLicense
Get-VBOOrganization
Get-VBOOrganizationMailbox
Get-VBOProxy
Get-VBORepository
Get-VBORestAPISettings
Get-VBORestorePoint
Install-VBOLicense
New-VBOBackupWindowSettings
New-VBOJobSchedulePolicy
Remove-VBOJob
Remove-VBOOrganization
Remove-VBOProxy
Remove-VBORepository
Set-VBOBackupWindowSettings
Set-VBOEmailSettings
Set-VBOFolderExclusions
Set-VBOHistorySettings
Set-VBOJob
Set-VBOJobSchedulePolicy
Set-VBOOrganization
Set-VBOProxy
Set-VBORepository
Set-VBORestAPISettings
Start-VBOJob
Stop-VBOJob
Sync-VBOEntity

More Details

  • NEW Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 1.5 – Here
  • Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365: Availability vs Recoverability – Here

Author

Anoop is Microsoft MVP! He is a Solution Architect in enterprise client management with more than 20 years of experience (calculation done in 2021) in IT. He is Blogger, Speaker, and Local User Group HTMD Community leader. His main focus is on Device Management technologies like SCCM 2012, Current Branch, and Intune. He writes about ConfigMgr, Windows 11, Windows 10, Azure AD, Microsoft Intune, Windows 365, AVD, etc……………