Microsoft Office 365 Backup Solutions FAQs

Veeam® Backup for Microsoft 365 mitigates the risk of losing access and control over your Microsoft 365 data so that your data is always protected and accessible. It gives you the power to securely back up Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) and:

• Protect your Office 365 data from accidental deletion, security threats and retention policy gaps
• Quickly restore individual Office 365 items and files with industry-leading recovery flexibility
• Meet legal and compliance requirements with efficient eDiscovery of Office 365 backup items

Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v7 has added backup copy to any object storage with immutability, integration with Veeam ONE™ for advanced monitoring and reporting and deeper integration with Veeam Service Provider Console for increased control in using BaaS in addition to enhancements for self-service restores. 

SEE THE FULL DETAILS OF WHAT’S NEW IN VERSION 7

Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 is a separate, standalone product that is a key component of Veeam Platform.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 provides advanced monitoring and reporting for Office 365 backups and comes at no additional cost to customers, and is delivered through Veeam ONE.

With Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, you can store immutable backup copies on ANY object storage repository, including Azure Blob/Archive, Amazon S3/Glacier and S3-compatible storage.

Yes, you can back up and restore Microsoft Teams data with Veeam. When data is posted and shared within Microsoft Teams, it is journaled into different locations, including SharePoint Online. You can use Veeam Explorers™ to find and restore Teams data, including documents and sites. You can also restore data attached to Teams tabs and channels and then manually reattach it to the corresponding Teams location.

You can store your Microsoft 365 (Office 365) backup wherever you want! If you have extra local storage available, you can use it to back up on premises. If you want to use the cloud, you can leverage a variety of object storage options — including AWS S3, Azure Blob, IBM Cloud, Wasabi and S3-compatible providers. You can also create a backup copy and store it in low-cost, long-term storage options, such as Amazon S3 Glacier, Glacier Deep Archive  and Azure Archive.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 is licensed on a subscription basis. One to five-year subscriptions are available and customers can choose to purchase the entire subscription upfront or pay annually. Larger discounts are provided for longer subscriptions. More pricing information can be found here, and/or contact a reseller.

All Subscription licenses are sold per user (minimum purchase of 10 licenses required) and include
24x7 Production Support.

To calculate the number of licenses you need, count the number of users within your Microsoft 365 subscription. You do not need to count the same user more than once across multiple Microsoft 365 services (e.g., the same Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business user = one Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 user).

Here are additional details for each Microsoft 365 service:

• Exchange Online or Exchange On-Premises: A user mailbox can be a personal mailbox, an online archive mailbox or both; you only need one license for that user. Please note that shared and resource mailboxes do not need to be licensed and can be backed up FREE of charge.
• OneDrive for Business: OneDrive for Business user licenses are automatically aligned with their matching email accounts. This means you cannot use the same license to back up one user’s email and another user’s OneDrive for Business account. Please note that OneDrive (without “for Business”) is a separate storage service and is not supported by this solution.
• SharePoint Online or SharePoint On-Premises: Each SharePoint user inside your Microsoft 365 subscription (or on-premises deployment) that has been granted access to the SharePoint sites you are looking to protect needs to be licensed to back up and protect your organization’s SharePoint environment. If you have a hybrid SharePoint deployment (i.e., SharePoint On-Premises and SharePoint Online) and the same user has access to both, only one Veeam license is needed for that user. Please note that external SharePoint users do not need to be licensed. An external SharePoint user is someone from outside your Microsoft 365 subscription to whom you have given access to one or more sites, files or folders. External authenticated users are limited to basic collaboration tasks and external anonymous users can edit or view specific documents when given specific permissions.
• Microsoft Teams: When protecting a team with Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, you must have a license for each user that is an active team member and who has a paid Teams license in Microsoft 365.

No, Veeam’s Microsoft 365 backup solution is not available through Veeam Universal License. It is a standalone offering available as a Subscription license on a per-user basis. 

Yes, you can add Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 licenses and co-term your different license purchases to match up on the same subscription cycle, keeping subscription renewals simple and straightforward.

Veeam counts managed users as a user with at least one restore point created in the past 31 days. After a month without backing up a user, you will be able to apply that license to another user and begin protecting it. Also, you have the option to revoke a license without waiting. You can do this through PowerShell or the RESTful API, but you need to remove all of the user’s data from all the repositories prior to revoking the license.

Yes, Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 Community Edition is free up to 10 users, 10 teams and 1 TB of SharePoint data.

Yes, Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 increases security for Microsoft 365 (Office 365) backup data via immutable backup copies, and encryption is available for any Microsoft 365 data that resides in object storage.

Yes, with Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, you can store data based on long-term retention policies for regulatory or compliance needs.

Yes, with Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, you can protect larger Microsoft 365 (Office 365) deployments with a single installation, including automated scale-out of the repository to eliminate issues with maximum file-size limits.

Yes, with Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, you can protect hybrid email and SharePoint deployments and migrate mailbox data between Exchange On-Premises and Microsoft 365 (Office 365).

Yes, Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 includes support for Microsoft 365 (Office 365) U.S. Government (DoD and non-DoD), Microsoft 365 (Office 365) Germany and Microsoft 365 (Office 365) China.

Yes, Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 empowers service providers to deliver Microsoft 365 (Office 365) backup services.

Yes, with Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, you can minimize overhead, improve recovery time and reduce costs with comprehensive automation via PowerShell and RESTful API support for all functionality, as well as self-service restore for service providers' customers.

Yes, Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 has a Self-Service Restore Portal, allowing admins to provide restore permissions to their Microsoft 365 (Office 365) users, as well as their service desk/help desk organizations. Service providers can also offer their customers self-service restore options.

You can use this step-by-step guide to convince someone else — your boss, a peer or even your team — that Microsoft 365 (Office 365) backup is important. We prepared the resources that you need to make your case for Office 365 backup.

Step 1: Understand the Microsoft 365 (Office 365) Shared Responsibility Model and explain why backup is needed.

Step 2: Show them how great Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 is by using demos or backup tests.

Step 3: Compare Veeam to others on third-party review platforms.

Step 4: Plan budget, pricing options and savings.

It’s a common misconception to think that Microsoft backs up your Microsoft 365 (Office 365) data. In reality, while Microsoft provides great resiliency and built-in tools for compliance, they do not provide a comprehensive backup. Microsoft’s Shared Responsibility Model states that organizations are still responsible for their own data. For more information on how the Shared Responsibility Model works, you can read this blog.

There are key reasons you should consider creating a backup for your Microsoft 365 (Office 365) data. Accidental deletions are commonplace in organizations, but sometimes it’s difficult to relocate the files after deletion, and they can be lost if they fall out of your retention policy. There are a number of looming threats today, including ransomware and internal malicious users. Office 365 backups ensure that you can recover your data if your Microsoft 365 environment is compromised by an attack. If you’re still unsure if you should back up Office 365 data, read this Gartner report.

Ultimately, you have to develop your own criteria on what is important for your Microsoft 365 (Office 365) backup. Deployment, backup recovery point objectives (RPOs), storage and recovery capabilities should all be important factors in deciding a backup solution. Fortunately, we developed a checklist to help you as you evaluate Office 365 backup vendors, and you can watch the webinar here. We also created a comparison chart so you can see how Veeam differs from other Office 365 backup vendors. You can access the chart here.