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Veeam have today released the long-awaited update to Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 (VB365), v6a.

This release has been overshadowed by Microsoft’s controversial changes being made to the Teams backup process, forcing vendors such as Veeam to cease using EWS as a mechanism to backup Teams data, instead insisting on the use of the Teams Graph API. Why is this controversial? Because the Teams Graph API is billable per query. You can read more about this in my full blog post here.

There are two key notes I’d like to highlight on this v6a release:

 

Permissions Changelog

 

Veeam are now including a permissions changelog for the Azure AD Application, vs the v6 release. This contains any newly required permissions, changed permissions or removed permissions, as well as describing the usage of these permissions. This is available within the v6a release notes, available here.

 

Alt Text: Image displaying the permissions tables within the release notes

 

Microsoft Teams API will NOT be enabled by default

 

That’s right! After my v6a preview was released, Veeam have released updated guidance around adopting the Microsoft Teams Graph API, opting to instead retain the use of EWS APIs by default.

Veeam’s KB article in question is KB4340. This KB details the steps required to enable TeamsGraphAPI backup, and provides two key cautions.

  • Microsoft is going to deprecate EWS backup for TeamsMessagesData in the future, I’ve already seen reports of it being inaccessible for some, should you choose to do nothing, your Teams backups will fail in the future.
  • Reconfiguring Veeam to utilise the Teams Graph APIs is irreversible, at both a proxy & repository level. The moment a new backup has been created leveraging these APIs, the repository on which the backup is stored can no longer be used for backing up Teams via EWS API. Whilst for proxies, the moment it is configured to utilise Teams Graph APIs, reversing this is not supported.

Happy Patching!

Time to let my Veeam team know this is out and begin out regression testing for our clients and portal.  Hope the teams piece doesn't slow this rollout down. 😂

Time to let my Veeam team know this is out and begin out regression testing for our clients and portal.  Hope the teams piece doesn't slow this rollout down. 😂

Suppose that depends if you’ll be pushing for Teams Graph API utilisation at the same time? Or if you’ll hold out for now.

Time to let my Veeam team know this is out and begin out regression testing for our clients and portal.  Hope the teams piece doesn't slow this rollout down. 😂

Suppose that depends if you’ll be pushing for Teams Graph API utilisation at the same time? Or if you’ll hold out for now.

My guess is hold out for now hopefully otherwise communication to clients on added costs.

@Chris.Childerhose

You still have to start the communication with your clients. There will be a day when the old method could be blocked or disabled by Microsoft. I recommend to start that conversation now :)

When that day happens, you have to talk to all of your customers at once. I assume, you won’t have the time to talk to all dozens or hundreds of clients when backups are stop working. That’s especially important in case you use multiple clients in the same VB365 environment.

@Chris.Childerhose

You still have to start the communication with your clients. There will be a day when the old method could be blocked or disabled by Microsoft. I recommend to start that conversation now :)

When that day happens, you have to talk to all of your customers at once. I assume, you won’t have the time to talk to all dozens or hundreds of clients when backups are stop working. That’s especially important in case you use multiple clients in the same VB365 environment.

Absolutely we will be discussing ahead of time with them.  Thanks 👍

Oh yuck….I hadn’t heard anything about this (on the MS side).  I have a ton of clients backing up Teams with a different product, but I imagine their access is the same, and I’m in the process of vetting VBO.  thanks for posting this!

Thanks for the post @MicoolPaul. It really is a relief that the Teams Export APIs will not be used by default in this version. It is coming but this gives a bit more time to get ready for the impending change.

@Chris.Childerhose

You still have to start the communication with your clients. There will be a day when the old method could be blocked or disabled by Microsoft. I recommend to start that conversation now :)

When that day happens, you have to talk to all of your customers at once. I assume, you won’t have the time to talk to all dozens or hundreds of clients when backups are stop working. That’s especially important in case you use multiple clients in the same VB365 environment.

Absolutely! This is the right time to make them aware of the future development…

Release notes are available now: https://www.veeam.com/kb4344

 

One thing they should be shouting a lot about are the performance improvements, it’s not just backup/restore performance either, but compression improvements too! Some big numbers there!

 

The other thing I’d call out is the ability to delete backup data from archive backups, the use case given is for GDPR compliance which makes sense to me.

Release notes are available now: https://www.veeam.com/kb4344

 

One thing they should be shouting a lot about are the performance improvements, it’s not just backup/restore performance either, but compression improvements too! Some big numbers there!

 

The other thing I’d call out is the ability to delete backup data from archive backups, the use case given is for GDPR compliance which makes sense to me.

The performance stuff is going to be great for us and lets hope it speeds up onboarding which is still the pain point for many MSPs I think. 👍🏼

Hey @MicoolPaul, I am sure you will like this: https://www.veeam.com/blog/veeam-announces-certified-support-microsoft-teams-backup.html

Great to see that Veeam will by default use EWS. This way we cam much better plan and transition to the new Graph API, and not everyone will directly need to switch.

Oh and the performance improvements look really impressive 👏

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