Everyone knows you need to back up your data, right? Most folks do a fair job of backing up their local or “on-prem” data, either to an offline storage device or the cloud. But what about all the data you have in Microsoft 365? All of the emails, OneDrive files, Teams files, and SharePoint sites?
A common misconception around Office 365 or Microsoft 365 is, “Microsoft handles all of that, right?” Wrong! A careful perusal of the service agreements will show that you, the customer, are solely responsible for data backup. Their job is to provide the platform (email, SharePoint, etc.), not to secure or protect the data. Scary huh?
Benefits of using Microsoft 365 Backup with Azure
Of course, there are many ways you can back up the data. One method is using a tool like Veeam to download all the data and back it up locally. This is a great way to backup small amounts of data. However, if you have a larger organization, lots of data, or lack the on-prem hardware to store all of the data, this can add up to some serious cash.
Fortunately, Microsoft can provide the tools to back up your data simply and securely. Let’s dive into the setup.
Setting Up Microsoft 365 Backup to Azure
Prerequisites
To back up your data to Azure, you obviously need an Azure subscription. Usually, the Azure account that is automatically created when you sign up for Microsoft 365 will be sufficient. However, if you are not the “Owner” of the tenant, you must be a Global Administrator to set this up.
Enable Pay-As-You-Go Billing
Start off by accessing the Microsoft 365 Admin Center (https://admin.microsoft.com) and log in with your Owner or Global Administrator credentials. In the left-hand menu pane, expand the Setup section and scroll down on the main window to “Activate pay-as-you-go services” under the Billing and Licenses heading. Clicking there will take you to the page to activate the Azure Pay-as-you-go services. Click Get Started to move to the next page.

On this page, select Syntex services. A “flyout” panel will appear on the right of your screen, like the one here:
Click the “Create a Pay as You Go Azure Subscription” link. This will open a new tab in your browser and log you into the Azure portal. You may be offered a tour of Azure, but you can skip the tours and get to the offers page:
Click Select Offer in the Pay-As-You-Go box.
Go through the wizard, fill in your name and organization information, complete identity verification by phone, and enter your credit card. You can choose to prepay for technical support or not. I usually do not. You’ll be encouraged to configure MFA, but you can skip that for the moment—go back and do it, though!
If this is your first time logging into Azure with this account, you’ll land on the “QuickStart Center.” This can be a valuable asset for learning about all things Azure, but we’ll skip it for now. In the search bar at the top of the page, begin to type in “Subscriptions” and select Subscriptions from the drop-down list.
On the subscription page, you should see “Azure Subscription 1”. You can take this time to rename it if you like. If you have other Azure subscriptions, make sure to select one where “Owner” is listed in the My Role column.
Add a Resource Group
Now that you have a subscription, you’ll need a resource group to contain the Syntex resources, which are your backups. Click on the subscription name, scroll down in the left pane to Settings, and then click Resource Groups.
In the Resource Group center pane, click Create:
On the Create a Resource Group page, fill in the name of your new Resource Group. I suggest something like “Syntex_Backups.” Note – Resource group names can only include alphanumeric, underscore, parentheses, hyphens, and periods (except at the end). This means no spaces!
Once your name is entered, select a region closest to you and your team.
If your organization uses tags to organize resources, you can click next to create a tag. This is optional and can be done later. If no tags are needed, click Review and Create.
This will take you to the validation screen, where your entries will undergo an automated final review for validity. If everything passes (and it should), click Create.
Turn on the Syntex Services
Once you get the popup saying the Resource Group has been created, return to the Microsoft Admin Center. (The Pay as You Go services tab may still be open. If not, it’s under Settings > Org settings).
Now, when you click the Syntex Services, the flyout pane should look like this:
You can now select an Azure Subscription, Resource Group, and Region. I suggest choosing the same region you used when creating the Resource Group. Accept the terms of service and click Save. You’ll get a “Please wait” hold screen for a minute or two, then the Manage Billing page. The important thing to look for is the green box saying that the Billing setup is complete.
Close the fly-out by clicking the X—don’t close the tab or browser window! This will take you back to the Pay-As-You-Go services page. Verify that Syntex Services are marked Active, and then click the Settings tab.
There are a lot of Syntex services listed, but the one we are concerned with is Storage. Click Storage on the menu, then Backup on the main pane.
A backup flyout pane will open; click “Turn On” at the bottom.
Then click Save
You’ll get the swirly wait screen for up to a few minutes.
If you get an error message saying, “Request failed with status code 500,” wait a few minutes and try again. Everything we’ve done so far sometimes takes a few minutes to take effect.
When it is successful, you’ll see this screen.
Now that backup is turned on, we’ll need to configure some policies.
Create Backup Policies
SharePoint/Teams
Go back to Settings > Microsoft 365 Backup from the left pane to set up policies. There are three sections- SharePoint, Exchange, and OneDrive, each with its own policy. Keep in mind that Teams sites and files are included in SharePoint. So, if you do not use SharePoint but your organization uses Teams to share or collaborate on files, you still need to go through the steps.
Starting with SharePoint, click the “Set up Policy” button.
The next screen details how often backups are made and how long each backup is kept. The default is to back up SharePoint sites every 10 minutes. Those 10-minute backups are each kept for 14 days. After 14 days, one is kept per week for a year.
This means that you can restore a SharePoint site at a 10-minute interval for the first two weeks. After that, you’ll have to pick one of the weekly backups.
Once you’ve reviewed and understood these intervals, click “Next” to select the SharePoint sites to backup.
Now, you are presented with a choice of which sites to back up. You can upload a list via CSV file, use a filter to choose, or select each site individually. Each method has benefits.
You can download a sample CSV file to note the format for the CSV method, but it’s essentially one site URL per line, up to 50,000 entries. This is the method to use if you have particular sites you do and do not want to back up.
For the filter method, you can choose sites that match all or at least one of the filters. The properties for the filter are Site Name/ URL and time period last modified.
Lastly, you can choose to select sites individually. This is the easiest option if you want to back up ALL of your SharePoint sites, as there is a “select all” checkbox.
Whichever method you choose, I recommend you think carefully about what sites you may want to omit. Test sites, for example, may not need to be backed up. Whichever method you use, continue through the wizard, ending with the “Review and finish” page, and click “Create Policy.” You’ll know it’s done when you see the green check mark on the “Creating Policy page.”
Click Done to return to the Policy page to move on to the next set of policies.
Exchange (email)
Creating a backup policy for Exchange mailboxes is very similar to SharePoint, with a few minor differences. Most important is the retention period. Just like a SharePoint site, each mailbox is backed up every ten minutes. However, unlike SharePoint sites, mailboxes keep those ten-minute interval snapshots for a whole year rather than dropping to a weekly retention point. This is all detailed on the first page after you click the “Set up policy” button in the Exchange section of the Backup Policy page.
Once you click “Next” to get to the mailbox selection page, you are faced with the same set of options to choose mailboxes to back up: CSV file, filter, or select individually.
Just like SharePoint sites, you can upload a CSV with one mailbox per line in the format johndoe@mycompany.com for a maximum of 50,000 entries.
The filter option differs slightly because you can select by Distribution Lists or Security groups. This method allows you to select up to three groups at a time. There is a “gotcha” here that is a bit counterintuitive. The policy doesn’t automatically include or exclude group members as they are added or removed from the group. To update the membership list, you have to run through the wizard to reset the scope to add or remove these mailboxes from the policy.
Like SharePoint, choosing the option to select mailboxes individually has a “select all” checkbox.
Again, choose the method that best suits your environment, follow the wizard to the “Review and finish” page, and click “Create Policy.”
Once you get the confirmation page, click “Done” to return to the Policies page.
OneDrive
Once we get to the OneDrive set-up, we’re in the home stretch! This one will look familiar, as the frequencies and retention periods are identical to those for SharePoint.
The selection methods, however, are identical to those for selecting mailboxes! That’s right, a CSV file with accounts, filters using Distribution lists and Security groups, or individual account selection. Too easy, right?
Once again, choose your selection criteria, select the accounts you wish to back up, and click “Create Policy.” I’ll bet you already guessed that.
Troubleshooting
On the main policy page, you’ll see the status for each type of backup and the number of included sites/mailboxes/accounts. You may also see errors, as pictured here, for my OneDrive test setup.
Several factors can cause these errors. You can click “Resolve” to get a list of the items with a problem. Most of these are self-explanatory, but there is one trick to discovering the error messages. The error is often cut off on the web page, so you can’t read the whole message. The solution is simple: click “Export” to download a CSV file with the entire error message. Most of the time, it will be simple, like the user has never logged into OneDrive, so technically, there is nothing to back up.
If you can’t resolve the problem, click the Remove button to remove the account causing it from the policy. Once the issue is fixed, you can click through and re-add the account to the policy.
That seems like a lot, but once you start clicking through, it only takes a few minutes to set up and have your data protected.
Next time, we’ll go through the steps to restore data from your backup to Sharepoint, Exchange, and OneDrive!
See you then!
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