How to add SMB repository to Veeam Backup for Office365

Challenge

This article covers two most popular scenarios of adding SMB repository to Veeam Backup for Office365
Note: Such repository type is on experimental support in the current version. So i.e. if a storage device supports both SMB 3.0 and iSCSI protocol, then the best practice would be to use the latter due to its ability to use Disk Queue which acts as a buffer space for data to land on before being sent off to disk.

If it’s a Windows-based shared folder, then it’s recommended to add the server it’s based on as a proxy and connect the same storage as a directly attached disk. 

Cause

Due to a fact that both Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 services must use \SYSTEM account to run correctly, it would be required to grant access to SMB share for Veeam servers in general rather than to the particular user.  

Solution

Scenario 1: Microsoft Windows SMB share with authorization

Prerequisites:

Consider that Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 SP1 do not support the SMB 3.0 share as a storage system. To use the SMB 3.0 share as a storage system, make sure you are using Microsoft Windows 8 or Microsoft Windows 2012 or later. Both Veeam Servers and SMB share location must be deployed within the same or a trusted domain.

• Open folder sharing settings for planned repository location and add all Veeam servers to it using their computer names. In example if your Veeam server is called “WIN-F4N92CDLKET” the list should look like this:

• Add repository in Veeam console as shown in this article

 

Scenario 2: Standalone storage appliance

In this scenario we will use Synology appliance as an example, but the same method should work for any standalone device that supports Microsoft Active Directory and its computer groups. 

• Add Veeam server and all remote backup proxies (if any) to Active Directory domain.
• Create an Active directory group in this domain and add all Veeam servers to it as “computer” objects:

• Add the storage device to the same domain:

• Make sure that SMB 3.0 protocol is enabled and previous versions are not allowed to use:

• Create SMB shared folder and grant read/write access to it for the domain group that was created earlier:

• Add new repository in Veeam console and manually type SMB share name in “Path” field as described here

 

Bonus: Adding standalone storage appliance using iSCSI protocol
In this scenario we will use Synology appliance as an example, but the same method would work for storage appliance that supports iSCSI protocol.

• Open iSCSI manager and create new LUN and Target:

• On Veeam server: open iSCSI initiator, enter your storage appliance IP address, click “Quick Connect…” and then click “Done”:

• Open Disk Management, bring iSCSI disk online and initialize it using default parameters:

• Create a new simple volume using default parameters:

• Create a new repository on this disk as shown here