Considerations

Before you restore your data, consider the listed recommendations and best practices for Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365.

General Considerations

• Data restore methods apply to Microsoft Outlook mailboxes, entire Microsoft OneDrives and Microsoft SharePoint sites. For other types of Outlook, OneDrive and SharePoint objects, you do not need to select the restore method.
• Backup and restore of Microsoft Teams data is available to users of the Flex and Premium plans only. Users can restore Teams data flexibly and do not need to select the restore method.
• Smaller restores may be quicker with Flex; benefits of Express are best realized with large restores.
• Veeam Data Cloud supports a maximum of 2 restore operations in parallel. To raise this limit in urgent cases, contact Veeam Customer Support.
• Restore of OneNote notebooks from backups of Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft OneDrive and Microsoft Teams data is not supported.

As a workaround, you can download the required OneNote file to your computer and then upload this OneNote file to your OneDrive or SharePoint site.

• Preservation Hold items are not available for restore under the Flex plan.

Express Restore Considerations

General

• Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 replaces data in the original location with the data from the backup. For example, if a user is making edits on a SharePoint site and you restore it to a previous state, the user will lose their edits.
• When you create a backup policy for an Outlook mailbox, OneDrive account or SharePoint site, Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 starts generating restore points.

• For Outlook, the restore points are created every 10 minutes. The retention period for these restore points is 52 weeks.
• For OneDrive and SharePoint, the restore points are created every 10 minutes. The retention period for these restore points is 2 weeks. In addition, weekly restore points are created once a week. The retention period for these restore points is 50 weeks.

For more information, see this Microsoft article.

• To restore an Outlook mailbox or OneDrive account for a user who is deleted from Microsoft Entra ID, do the following:

• If the user has been deleted within the past 30 days, restore the user based on the instructions in this Microsoft article.
• For Outlook, if the user account is permanently deleted, Microsoft retains the inactive mailbox for a set time. To restore the inactive mailbox, you must convert it to a new, active mailbox that is linked to a new user. For details, see this Microsoft article. Once you convert the inactive mailbox to an active one, remove the deleted user from the backup policy. Then, add the new user with the linked active mailbox to the backup policy.
• For OneDrive, you can restore the OneDrive to the original location. Once restored, the OneDrive is in an "orphaned" state. For details on how to connect the OneDrive to a user, see this Microsoft article.

Outlook

• For Outlook restore, only mailbox items that were changed, deleted to the Recoverable Items folder or purged can be restored. New mailbox items are kept. This can lead to unwanted data being restored.
• You cannot back up mailbox draft items and thus cannot restore them.
• For calendar item restore, restoring the organizer copy does not automatically update the attendee copies. It only allows the organizer to send updates for this calendar item in the future. This means that if an attendee has already accepted or declined the meeting, their copy of the calendar item will not be updated to match the restored organizer's copy, unless the organizer explicitly updates the meeting request.
• Items moved to the Deleted Items folder will not be restored. Mailbox users can recover these items themselves by moving them back to the Inbox from the Deleted Items folder.
• If the parent folder of an item has been deleted, the item will be restored to a newly created folder named Recovered Items YYYY-MM-DD, HH:MM.
• The Outlook mailbox folder structure is not backed up. This means that while you perform a mailbox restore with multiple hierarchical folders, the folder structure is not reconstructed when restored. The restored mailbox items are located in a different folder, created by Microsoft.

OneDrive and SharePoint

• Site search is case-sensitive and is a prefix-type search.
• Restore will fail for OneDrive accounts or SharePoint sites under the strict SEC 17a-4(f) hold policy. You must remove the hold before you perform restore.
• If you rename a tenant, move a tenant or change a SharePoint site URL, you cannot revert those changes when performing restore.