July 26, 2017 at 11:04Details on the new version of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 and briefly on the drawing of tickets for VMworld 2017
- Tutorial
Veeam recently launched a beta test program for the new version of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365. This news is especially relevant in light of recent reports from Microsoft , according to which the revenue from sales of corporate subscriptions for cloud-based Office 365 over the past quarter for the first time exceeded the revenue from licenses for traditional offline- Office applications
In our blog, we talked about version 1.0 of the Veeam solution designed to back up and restore Exchange Online data. With version 1.5, it will be possible to backup and restore mail not only for the cloud, but also for the on-premises Exchange or hybrid organization.
The new version is scheduled for release at the end of the current quarter and, we hope, will especially please service providers. But not only them - in fact, in addition to the new distributed architecture and an improved interface, it offers a set of PowerShell cmdlets and a RESTful API to automate the work of administrators.
For details, welcome to cat.
So, today in the program:
Compared with the first version, the architecture has been significantly redesigned and now allows you to scale the solution for large organizations and service providers. How can this be done? Here are the key points:
In the picture, it all looks something like this:
You can configure tasks taking into account the structure of your organization — for example, back up mail from a head office, a department (marketing, sales, finance, etc.), local branches and remote branches to a separate repository , etc. If you are a service provider, then note that now you can add data from different users to different repositories, which the previous version did not allow.
To recover letters, shared folders, tasks and calendars, Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange is still used .
VERY IMPORTANT!Beta version requires a clean install. Upgrading to 1.5 beta from release 1.0 is not supported. Also, the upgrade from beta to release 1.5 will not be supported. Be careful!
Now more about the components.
This central component is installed on a physical or virtual machine running Windows 7 or higher. The machine must meet the following requirements:
The server functions include managing licenses and general settings (in particular, setting notifications about job execution and proxy status, selecting folders that do not need to be backed up - for example, Junk E-mail), managing tasks, storing the configuration database, ensuring the operation of the RESTful API , etc.
Important! The recommended file systems for deploying a VBO365 server are NTFS and ReFS. Using FAT32 is not recommended because it limits the size of the configuration base to 4 gigabytes.
A new view called Backup Infrastructure has appeared in the interface . It is made in the image and likeness of a similar representation in Veeam Backup & Replication: the navigation tree displays the objects that make up the Veeam Backup for MS Office 365 backup infrastructure — proxies and repositories. Using the menu commands located on the corresponding tabs, you can add, delete and edit the properties of these objects.
This is a new component of the architecture that allows you to optimize data processing by offloading the management server, and also scale the solution as needed. As a proxy, you can use a physical or virtual machine running Windows 7 or higher. The requirements for it are similar to the requirements for the management server. When planning your installation, pay attention to the following:
By right-clicking or by the Add Proxy command from the corresponding menu tab, the setup wizard will start in 3 steps:
After that, the question will be asked - but do we want to immediately configure the repository for the new proxy?
We answer Yes and proceed.
The repository serves as a place to store backup data. You can configure backup tasks in such a way that each task adds data to its repository.
Important: The same proxy server can work with multiple repositories.
We also create a repository using the 3-step wizard. First we indicate the name, select which proxy server and which path the repository will be located:
Naturally, each repository will have its own storage policy. By default, data is stored for 3 years, but you can set the value you need - from several days to an arbitrarily long time.
I draw your attention to the types of storage that Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 supports as a repository:
The path to the default repository associated with the default proxy on the Veeam Backup for Office 365 server will be: C: \ VeeamRepository .
Note: It is not recommended to use the same repository Veeam Backup & Replication works with as a place to store mail backups, if you have one. This is due to the fact that Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 and Veeam Backup & Replication have a completely different backup data structure, as well as different storage policies for the contents of the repositories.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 collects mail data from the Exchange organization using Exchange Web Services and PowerShell and saves this data to the repository. Data transfer is through a proxy server specified in the job settings; the transfer uses SSL.
Note: Naturally, the all-in-one scenario is also possible, that is, on the local server you have both management and a default proxy with a default repository.
The following structure is formed and maintained in the repository:
As we can see, there are folders where the mail backup is stored - they are named according to the time the mail was last changed. That is, letters that underwent the last change in 2016 will fall into the folder with the name 2016 . And if the letter was modified, say, on May 26, 2015, then it will fall into the 2015 folder .
The Repository.xml file contains configuration settings, including the proxy ID and the management server.
Inside the repository folders are the following files:
In version 1.5, the number of threads configured by default will be increased to 64 . Users are given the opportunity to set the value of this parameter in the proxy server properties. Here you can also specify the bandwidth limit for the channel used by this proxy (by default there are no restrictions).
If the management server stops working, the proxies responsible for the backup tasks will work autonomously for 48 hours to complete their tasks. If the proxy itself crashed, you will receive an e-mail notification about this (if configured), and as soon as its operation is restored, run the Rescan command to update the data about it in the database.
In the new version, this is not only a Microsoft Office 365 cloud organization, but also a local Microsoft Exchange organization. A hybrid organization scenario is also supported, which helps migrate mailboxes.
Using PowerShell and the RESTful API, end users and service providers can automate common tasks.
To work with the RESTful API, you need to activate the corresponding service.
On the management server, you can configure sending notifications about the status of backup jobs and the status of proxy servers. The administrator can specify which statuses of tasks should be notified by e-mail: Success , Warning or Failure .
Similar settings can be used to get a message about a broken proxy server in time.
Recovery options remain the same as in version 1.0, they are implemented using Veeam Explorer for Exchange:
Now they have also added recovery using PowerShell cmdlets.
Thus, in version 1.5 of Veeam Backup for MS Office 365, we have a well-scalable solution with improved performance, which has a set of features that will be useful to both end users and service providers.
This time, Veeam is raffling off tickets for VMworld 2017, the annual international conference hosted by VMware.
What is going to be there? As always, the most interesting reports and the most popular speakers, the latest innovations from the world of virtualization and cloud infrastructures, well-known experts, IT industry professionals. All participants will receive special prizes and gifts, and in the end - a visit to the famous VMworld Customer Appreciation Party.
How to get there? This year, Veeam provides 10 free tickets for VMworld 2017. To participate in the draw, you need to register on the site, right here . The ticket includes visits to all general reports and any thematic sessions, VMware Hands-On Labs test labs and Solutions Exchange booths.
Being at the exhibition, be sure to visit the Veeam booth - there you can talk with our experts. They will answer your questions about company products, about ensuring data availability, about backup and recovery options when working in public, private and hybrid clouds, in virtual and physical environments, and so on. Do not miss meetings with IT pros from around the world and, of course, prize draws from Veeam. It will not be boring!
Drawings of tickets will last until August 4. Perhaps a lucky ticket is waiting for you - come in here . Good luck!
Useful UPD: We provide IT Honored Workers with free NFR license keys for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 version 1.0. The license is designed for 10 user mailboxes and will be valid for 1 year. To get the key you need, as usual, specify your data here .
In our blog, we talked about version 1.0 of the Veeam solution designed to back up and restore Exchange Online data. With version 1.5, it will be possible to backup and restore mail not only for the cloud, but also for the on-premises Exchange or hybrid organization.
The new version is scheduled for release at the end of the current quarter and, we hope, will especially please service providers. But not only them - in fact, in addition to the new distributed architecture and an improved interface, it offers a set of PowerShell cmdlets and a RESTful API to automate the work of administrators.
For details, welcome to cat.
So, today in the program:
- New in architecture
- Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Server
- Updated user interface
- Proxy server
- Repository
- How it works
- Data Link Settings
- Offline Proxy
- Types of Supported Organizations
- Notifications
- Mail recovery
- And a little bit about drawing tickets for VMworld
New in architecture
Compared with the first version, the architecture has been significantly redesigned and now allows you to scale the solution for large organizations and service providers. How can this be done? Here are the key points:
- The main load for working with data is now the proxy server, and you can deploy them as much as you need to backup your organization’s data. A proxy server can work with one or several Exchange organizations.
- For each proxy server, a repository is configured (one or several), where the proxy will save mail data.
- The central server VBO365 performs management functions, supports the configuration database, provides the user console and RESTful API. On the same server, the default proxy and default repository are set.
- Job backup - a set of settings according to which the backup is performed. We indicate which mailboxes should be backed up, where to save the data, at what time to do all this. In fact, we get a backup policy for mail.
In the picture, it all looks something like this:
You can configure tasks taking into account the structure of your organization — for example, back up mail from a head office, a department (marketing, sales, finance, etc.), local branches and remote branches to a separate repository , etc. If you are a service provider, then note that now you can add data from different users to different repositories, which the previous version did not allow.
To recover letters, shared folders, tasks and calendars, Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange is still used .
VERY IMPORTANT!Beta version requires a clean install. Upgrading to 1.5 beta from release 1.0 is not supported. Also, the upgrade from beta to release 1.5 will not be supported. Be careful!
Now more about the components.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Server
This central component is installed on a physical or virtual machine running Windows 7 or higher. The machine must meet the following requirements:
- CPU: x64
- RAM: 4GB
- Disk: minimum 500 MB of free space for installation
The server functions include managing licenses and general settings (in particular, setting notifications about job execution and proxy status, selecting folders that do not need to be backed up - for example, Junk E-mail), managing tasks, storing the configuration database, ensuring the operation of the RESTful API , etc.
Important! The recommended file systems for deploying a VBO365 server are NTFS and ReFS. Using FAT32 is not recommended because it limits the size of the configuration base to 4 gigabytes.
Updated user interface
A new view called Backup Infrastructure has appeared in the interface . It is made in the image and likeness of a similar representation in Veeam Backup & Replication: the navigation tree displays the objects that make up the Veeam Backup for MS Office 365 backup infrastructure — proxies and repositories. Using the menu commands located on the corresponding tabs, you can add, delete and edit the properties of these objects.
Proxy server
This is a new component of the architecture that allows you to optimize data processing by offloading the management server, and also scale the solution as needed. As a proxy, you can use a physical or virtual machine running Windows 7 or higher. The requirements for it are similar to the requirements for the management server. When planning your installation, pay attention to the following:
- The management server and proxy server must be in the same domain, and deployment to trusted domains is also allowed.
- To transfer data between the proxy and the management server, TCP ports 9192 and 9193 are used by default .
- To transfer data between the proxy and Exchange Online, the default ports are 80 and 443 .
- You can use the default proxy deployed by default to the management server.
To configure a new proxy, open the Backup Infrastructure view , while in the navigation tree the focus automatically switches to the first node - Backup Proxies .
By right-clicking or by the Add Proxy command from the corresponding menu tab, the setup wizard will start in 3 steps:
- Enter the name or IP address of the new proxy.
- We indicate the account under which we will knock on this server. It must have local admin rights on the proxy machine.
Note: Veeam.Archiver.Proxy service will work under Local System . - We monitor the installation of components on the specified server.
After that, the question will be asked - but do we want to immediately configure the repository for the new proxy?
We answer Yes and proceed.
Repository
The repository serves as a place to store backup data. You can configure backup tasks in such a way that each task adds data to its repository.
Important: The same proxy server can work with multiple repositories.
We also create a repository using the 3-step wizard. First we indicate the name, select which proxy server and which path the repository will be located:
Naturally, each repository will have its own storage policy. By default, data is stored for 3 years, but you can set the value you need - from several days to an arbitrarily long time.
I draw your attention to the types of storage that Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 supports as a repository:
- Local folder on the management server (default repository).
- Direct Attached Storage (DAS) connected to the management server; external devices with USB / eSATA connection and volumes with RDM (raw device mapping) are supported.
- Network Storage Systems Storage Area Network (SAN); The management server must be connected to the SAN using hardware or virtual HBA or iSCSI initiator.
- Support for shared folders SMB 3.0 is announced as an experimental mode (for the management server account, you must provide at least write permissions).
The path to the default repository associated with the default proxy on the Veeam Backup for Office 365 server will be: C: \ VeeamRepository .
Note: It is not recommended to use the same repository Veeam Backup & Replication works with as a place to store mail backups, if you have one. This is due to the fact that Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 and Veeam Backup & Replication have a completely different backup data structure, as well as different storage policies for the contents of the repositories.
How it works
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 collects mail data from the Exchange organization using Exchange Web Services and PowerShell and saves this data to the repository. Data transfer is through a proxy server specified in the job settings; the transfer uses SSL.
Note: Naturally, the all-in-one scenario is also possible, that is, on the local server you have both management and a default proxy with a default repository.
- At the first start of the backup task, a database file in the ADB format and auxiliary files are created in the repository. By default, they are located in a folder named
(year of the last change of the object from the mail). To work with this base, the Extensible Storage Engine for Windows (ESE) engine is used. The first pass of the task creates a full backup of the content for all selected mailboxes. - The next time the job passes, the database structure data and the mail data itself are synchronized with the current state of the Exchange organization using Exchange Web Services. Each time, a successfully completed task creates a recovery point, where it saves the corresponding state of the database. These backups are already incremental - that is, Veeam detects changes in mail data (new mailboxes or any modifications) that have occurred since the last launch. Then “incremental synchronization” is performed.
The following structure is formed and maintained in the repository:
As we can see, there are folders where the mail backup is stored - they are named according to the time the mail was last changed. That is, letters that underwent the last change in 2016 will fall into the folder with the name 2016 . And if the letter was modified, say, on May 26, 2015, then it will fall into the 2015 folder .
The Repository.xml file contains configuration settings, including the proxy ID and the management server.
Inside the repository folders are the following files:
- repository.adb - a database file where, in fact, the data of the mailboxes of the Exchange Organization is stored, with the entire hierarchy preserved (mailboxes, folders and objects in them - letters, calendars, tasks). The storage period for this data is set in the repository settings, as described above.
- transaction log files and checkpoint - will be required when you decide to restore the database to the selected state.
Data Link Settings
In version 1.5, the number of threads configured by default will be increased to 64 . Users are given the opportunity to set the value of this parameter in the proxy server properties. Here you can also specify the bandwidth limit for the channel used by this proxy (by default there are no restrictions).
Offline Proxy
If the management server stops working, the proxies responsible for the backup tasks will work autonomously for 48 hours to complete their tasks. If the proxy itself crashed, you will receive an e-mail notification about this (if configured), and as soon as its operation is restored, run the Rescan command to update the data about it in the database.
Types of Supported Organizations
In the new version, this is not only a Microsoft Office 365 cloud organization, but also a local Microsoft Exchange organization. A hybrid organization scenario is also supported, which helps migrate mailboxes.
PowerShell and RESTful API Support
Using PowerShell and the RESTful API, end users and service providers can automate common tasks.
- PowerShell support is implemented using the module called by the Import-Module Veeam.Archiver.PowerShell command .
- The RESTFul API is expected to be useful to service providers along with the proxy scaling capabilities and dedicated repositories for user organizations described above.
To work with the RESTful API, you need to activate the corresponding service.
- We click on the icon of the main menu in the upper left corner of the console, a dialog with options opens.
- Go to the REST API tab and check the Enable REST Service checkbox .
- Then click on the Install button and use the certificate selection wizard.
Notifications
On the management server, you can configure sending notifications about the status of backup jobs and the status of proxy servers. The administrator can specify which statuses of tasks should be notified by e-mail: Success , Warning or Failure .
Similar settings can be used to get a message about a broken proxy server in time.
Mail recovery
Recovery options remain the same as in version 1.0, they are implemented using Veeam Explorer for Exchange:
- Export mailboxes, folders, and individual letters to .pst format
- Saving letters in .msg format
- Sending letters \ calendars \ tasks by attaching to e-mail
- Recovery of mailboxes, letters, folders directly to the Exchange organization
Now they have also added recovery using PowerShell cmdlets.
Thus, in version 1.5 of Veeam Backup for MS Office 365, we have a well-scalable solution with improved performance, which has a set of features that will be useful to both end users and service providers.
And a little bit about drawing tickets for VMworld
This time, Veeam is raffling off tickets for VMworld 2017, the annual international conference hosted by VMware.
- The US conference will be held at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Convention Center in Las Vegas from August 27 to 31.
- The European Conference will be held at Fira Gran Via in Barcelona from September 11 to 14.
What is going to be there? As always, the most interesting reports and the most popular speakers, the latest innovations from the world of virtualization and cloud infrastructures, well-known experts, IT industry professionals. All participants will receive special prizes and gifts, and in the end - a visit to the famous VMworld Customer Appreciation Party.
How to get there? This year, Veeam provides 10 free tickets for VMworld 2017. To participate in the draw, you need to register on the site, right here . The ticket includes visits to all general reports and any thematic sessions, VMware Hands-On Labs test labs and Solutions Exchange booths.
Being at the exhibition, be sure to visit the Veeam booth - there you can talk with our experts. They will answer your questions about company products, about ensuring data availability, about backup and recovery options when working in public, private and hybrid clouds, in virtual and physical environments, and so on. Do not miss meetings with IT pros from around the world and, of course, prize draws from Veeam. It will not be boring!
Drawings of tickets will last until August 4. Perhaps a lucky ticket is waiting for you - come in here . Good luck!
useful links
- To join the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 beta test program, you must, as always, specify the mailbox here
- For the beta version, you need to use the appropriate license (included in the package). The user manual is also included in the package (in English), the documentation for version 1.0 (in English) can be found here
- The nuances of work can be discussed at the forum , where they will also be happy with your comments and suggestions.
- Habr article about the first version of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365
Useful UPD: We provide IT Honored Workers with free NFR license keys for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 version 1.0. The license is designed for 10 user mailboxes and will be valid for 1 year. To get the key you need, as usual, specify your data here .