OneDrive Windows Backup using Veeam Agents. The easy way

Taking a Backup of both Physical and Virtual workloads is an essential task. It should be enabled and configured in all instances. Veeam is making this process very easy also when it comes down to restore data. In a previous article we have explored the install and configuration of the Veeam Agents for Windows. Since a new version of the Veeam Agents has been released in this article we’ll cover the scenario about creating a OneDrive Windows Backup. In practice the Backup of Windows based machines can be saved directly to the OneDrive storage.

In this particular case we’ll explore the option for OneDrive for Business. It is possible to use a OneDrive for consumer as well.

What’s interesting is that generally speaking agent based backups are used for physical machines. One question at this point might be: can we use this solution to also cover virtual worloads in public clouds running on different types of Hypervisors?

The short answer is: Yes we can.

The longer answer is that we can still install the Veeam Agents on virtual workloads for example running in Azure, Amazon, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and more. Eventually we might want to protect such workloads and backup direclty to OneDrive benefitting from a cross-cloud scenario. Of course requirements might change based on different setups.

Another interesting scenario worth mentioning is for the Sales force working on the field for extensive periods of times rarely touching base either with the headquarters or with a stable connection. In such cases the new version of the Veeam Agent also includes a caching mechanism covering these options as well.

So at this point let’s take a quick look on how to run a OneDrive Windows Backup with Veeam Agents.

How to create OneDrive Windows Backup using Veeam Agents

From the tray bar we have the Veeam Icon we can use to configure jobs settings and monitor status as well. So in this case let’s go for the menu Backup > Configure Backup.

In the backup mode we can choose which volumes we want to include in the Backup job. Since I have a partition dedicated to Virtual Machines I will choose the second option to exlcude that specific drive as per screenshot below.

At this point we can select the volumes for the OneDrive Windows Backup job.

In the “Destination” section of the wizard we have multiple options. In particular in this new edition there is the option to send backups to a Veeam Backup Repository, Veeam Cloud Connect and a Microsoft OneDrive both Business and Consumer Editions.

When selecting the Veeam Backup Server we have to specify the name of the Backup Server and the credentials. Of course these will be provided by the Veeam Administrator. In the next screen we can also select the Backup repository where the data will be stored.

Similarly in the case of Service Provide option we need to specify the name of the Veeam Cloud Connect which the Service Provider will host.

In the case of Microsoft OneDrive all we to do is to provide the credentials to authenticate and authorize the Veeam Agent App.

So let’s click on the link to sign in to Microsoft OneDrive.

Let’s choose the desired account to use. We can use both OneDrive for Business and Consumer editions.

Let’s provide a password. If a backup is not run in 14 days the sign in process needs to be done again.

The wizard now shows the permissions we need to grant to the Veeam Agent for Windows App to store our Backups into OneDrive.

Back to previous wizard. A message is now informing us to exclude the “VeeamBackup” created from the Veeam App from the folders to sync. As this will duplicate the data stored on OneDrive.

From the OneDrive client setting let’s make sure the “VeeamBackup” folder is not selected.

In the advanced settings in the case of OneDrive Windows Backup we can create Synthetic and Active Full Backups and of course set a schedule for these jobs.

In the Storage section we can choose the compression level and the Storage optimization. There are different profiles and the biggest block size can reach up to 4096 KB.

Depending on network connectivity we can adjust this value as desired.

When configuring OneDrive Windows Backup jobs it is also possible to enable a “Backup cache”. This option will keep the data blocks locally on the computer we are backing up until the connection is available. Once data is transferred to OneDrive will be deleted from local cache.

Ideally we might want to setup this cache on a different drive from the one we are backimg up.

And finally we also have the option to schedule OneDrive Windows Backup jobs also taking advantage computer hardware events.

The wizard now shows a summary of the main settings we can review and finish to commit the Backup job configuration.

If we now take a look at the “VeeamBackup” folder created on OneDrive there is a folder structure with:

• Unique ID of the computer backed up
• a BlockStore system of sub-folders including data blocks
• a Metadata folder with Backup job metadata information
• a CheckPoint folder

And this concludes thisvery quick article on how to store Windows Backup on OneDrive.