Protect Microsoft 365 Mailboxes

Once you have registered your Microsoft 365 domain as a source, you're ready to protect the user Mailboxes in your domain.

To protect your Microsoft 365 Mailboxes:

  • If the Private Chats option is enabled under Mailbox during app registration, the Private Chats will be backed up along with the corresponding Users. Mailboxes backup may fail if the Azure subscription configuration is not set appropriately.

  • This is an Early Access feature. Contact your Cohesity account team to enable the feature. After you enable the feature, ensure that you update the registered source to include backups of Private Chats. For more details, see Step 4 in Source registration.

  1. In DataProtect as a Service, under Sources, find the Microsoft 365 source and click on it.

  2. Click the Mailbox tab.

  3. Select the individual Mailboxes you wish to protect or:

    • Click Users > Select All Child Objects to protect all the Mailboxes in this source.

    • Click Users > Auto Protect This to protect all the Mailboxes plus any future additional Mailboxes on that source.

    • Click the Security Groups icon and select the security group to protect the Mailboxes of the users in the security group. For more information, see Security Groups.

      Security groups based user import also supports nested security groups.

      For example, if a security group (AA) includes members (X and Y) and security groups (BB and CC), the import process includes the members (X and Y) and the members of security groups (BB and CC).

      Cohesity supports only users and not devices in Security Groups.
      This is a Private Preview feature. Private Preview was termed as Early Access in the earlier releases. Contact your Cohesity account team to enable the feature.

  1. Click the Protect icon above the list.

  2. Choose a policy to specify backup frequency and retention. If you don't have a policy, you can easily create one.

  3. Under Settings, edit the Start Time if necessary.

  4. Under Additional Settings, you can enable Indexing and other additional settings.

    Indexing is enabled by default. If you plan to recover individual emails or folders, in addition to whole Mailboxes, you need to enable Indexing in this step. When you do, you can include or exclude specific Mailboxes from indexing.

  5. Click Protect.

The backups start immediately after you protect the objects, regardless of the time you set for the protection run.

Next > When the first protection run completes, you will be ready to recover your protected Mailboxes when and if you need to.

Additional Settings

Advance Settings Description
Start Time

Available only if the selected policy is set to Backup Daily. Indicates what time the protection run should start. Enter the Start Time and select AM or PM. The default time zone is the browser's time zone. You can change the time zone of the protection run by selecting a different time zone here.

SLA

The service-level agreement (SLA) defines how long the administrator expects a protection run to take. Enter:

  • Full. The number of minutes you expect a full protection run, which captures all the blocks in an object, to take.

  • Incremental. The number of minutes you expect an incremental protection run, which captures only the changed blocks in an object, to take.

Cancel Runs at Quiet Time Start

(Available only if the selected policy has at least one Quiet Time)

When enabled, all the protection runs that are currently executing will cancel when the Quiet Time period starts. By default, this setting is disabled, meaning that after a protection run starts, it continues to execute even when a Quiet Time period starts. However, new protection runs will not start during a Quiet Time.

Indexing

By default, indexing is enabled.

Indexing is mandatory for granular restore of an Exchange Online mailbox , such as restoring a folder or restoring an email.

Exclusions

Select the folders that you plan to exclude from the backup or click Add to add custom folders that you want to exclude from the backup.

To protect the Recoverable Items, ensure to deselect Archive Recoverable Items and Recoverable Items.

This is a Private Preview feature. Private Preview was termed as Early Access in the earlier releases. Contact your Cohesity account team to enable the feature.