Protect Microsoft 365 Mailboxes

Once you have registered your Microsoft 365 domain as a source, you're ready to use Cohesity DataProtect as a Service 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.

  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.
      This is an Early Access feature. Contact your Cohesity account team to enable the feature.

  4. Click the Protect icon above the list.

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

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

  7. Under Additional Settings, you can enable Indexing, configure a specific End Date, Alerts, 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.

  8. 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.
End Date

If you need to end protection on a specific date, enable this to select the date.
Exclusions

Enable Exclude Disks to select the disks to exclude for all VMs in this object's protection. Enter the Controller Type, Controller Bus Number, and Unit Number for each disk to exclude. Excluded disks are not backed up and are not recovered during VM recovery.

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

This is an Early Access feature. Contact your Cohesity account team to enable the feature.
App Consistent Backups

Enable App-Consistent backups if you want the guest operating systems of all the protected VMs to be quiesced before snapshots of these VMs are created. Quiescing of VMs prior to capturing snapshots ensures the integrity of the data saved in the snapshots.

With the App Consistent backups enabled, the following options are available:

  • Take a Crash Consistent backup if unable to perform an App Consistent backup. Enable this option if you want Cohesity DataProtect as a Service to capture a crash-consistent snapshot if Cohesity DataProtect as a Service fails to capture an app-consistent snapshot. If this option is disabled and Cohesity DataProtect as a Service is unable to perform an app-consistent backup of a VM, a snapshot is not captured.

  • Backup application data and truncate their log files. Enable this option if you want to back up applications (Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange Server) that are running on the Hyper-V server and truncate the logs of applications.

This option is applicable only for VSS copy backup.
Priority

Select a priority for the protection task execution. Cohesity DataProtect as a Service supports concurrent backups, but if the number of tasks exceeds the ability to process them, they are executed in this priority order:

  1. High-priority tasks

  2. Medium-priority tasks

  3. Low-priority tasks
Alerts

Click to enable one or more of these alert types to trigger alerts for the following events and click Add to enter email addresses.

  • SLA Violation. Creates warning alert when a protection run exceeds the configured SLA. Sends email.

  • Failure. Creates critical alert when object protection fails to complete. Sends email.

  • Success. Creates information alert when object protection completes. Does not send email.
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.
Skip Files on Errors

(On by default)

A protection run continues even if it encounters errors on files, such as permissions errors. If files are skipped, the protection run details page indicates a Warning status and provides additional information. If toggled off, the protection run stops when it encounters an error.
Exclusions and Inclusions By default, all files and folders are included for protection. Use this option if you want to exclude or include specific locations. By creating exclusion and inclusion rules, you can limit the protection to a specific set of files and directories and therefore minimize the disk space used to store the data.
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.