To protect data stored in the Microsoft cloud, Nakivo Backup & Replication provides a valid capability to backup and recover Office 365 items.
To protect Office 365 environment, Nakivo must be configured accordingly. Previous steps covered the configuration of the following:
- Added Office 365 to the inventory - Nakivo will take care of configuring the application in Azure platform with the required permissions.
- Created the Office 365 repository - to store Office 365 data.
The creation of the Backup Job is the next step to configure the protection for your production environment.
Blog series
Nakivo: backup and recover Office 365 items - pt.1
Nakivo: backup and recover Office 365 items - pt.2
Configure backup and recover Office 365 jobs
To protect your Office 365 data, you need to configure a backup job specifying mailboxes to process.
Create a backup job
From Nakivo Dashboard, click Create and select Office 365 backup job.
Select mailboxes to backup and click Next. Note that greyed out items are unlicensed mailboxes.
Select the previously created repository as Destination then click Next.
Specify a Schedule and click Next.
Specify the required retention and click Next.
Enter the backup Job name and click Finish & Run to save and run the job.
Select Run for all items then click Run.
The backup is being executed.
Depending on the amount of data to backup, after some minutes the backup completes successfully.
Delete emails from mailbox
To test the recovery process, we are going to delete some emails from an active mailbox.
Open your Office 365 Outlook, select some emails and click Delete.
Selected emails have been deleted from the mailbox.
Recover Office 365 items
Highlight previously Office 365 backup job, from the main menu click Recover and select Microsoft 365.
Select the mailbox to recover and the restore point you want to use. Click Next.
Select from the Account list the previously created recovery account (Office-365 in the example) then click Next.
From the chosen mailbox, select items you want to recover and click Next. We are going to recover items previously deleted from the mailbox.
Specify the desired recovery options and click Recover.
- Recovery type - allows to specify where to recover items.
- Recover to original location
- Overwrite behavior - specify the behavior if the recovered item exists at destination.
- Rename recovered item if such item exists
- Skip recovered item if such item exists
- Overwrite the original item if such item exists
- Recovery type - allows to specify where to recover items.
- Recover to mailbox
- Mailbox - specify the mailbox to recover items.
The recovery process is being executed. Access Activities section to check the recovery progress.
If the recover process fails, click on the Recovery Job link then click View details. In the example, the recover process failed due to insufficient permissions configured in Azure. Double check and amend configured permissions in the application defined in Azure then try the recover process once again.
If Nakivo has all the required permissions configured, the recover process completes successfully.
Accessing the mailbox in Outlook, deleted items have been recovered and available again.
Bear in mind that Microsoft is responsible to keep Office 365 infrastructure functional only and moving services such as emails to SaaS solutions, not always is clear who is responsible for the data protection and availability. Relying on providers backup tools is not enough to protect your data keeping them safe and available.
Nakivo Backup & Replication is available to download as 30-day trial.
