Deploying Veeam Backup for Office 365 Backup Proxy Server in AWS

Challenge

You need to configure an EC2 instance to act as a Backup Proxy for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 in AWS due to following reasons:

• Current proxy/deployment has or will reach the maximums;
• Growth within the Organization(s);
• Meet the RPO requirements of O365 backup by distributing the backup load to multiple proxies;

Solution

The first step to add a Backup Proxy to an existing Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 deployment in AWS is to deploy a new Windows Server EC2 instance with the appropriate settings for your design. Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 needs to be a Windows x64 OS with a minimum of 4 cores and 8 GiB of RAM (c5.xlarge).   

For Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 system requirements, please refer to System Requirements section of the User Guide. For further sizing refer to Sizing section of the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Best Practices. 
 
Once you have determined your instance size please follow the instruction below:

1. Click on Launch Instance in the EC2 Management console.
2. On the Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) step you can type "windows" into the search bar and choose Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Base for the instance type and click Select.
3. On the Choose an Instance Type step you will need to select the instance type needed.  For this guide we use a c5.xlarge, but your instance type may be different depending upon the needs determined above. Choose your instance type and click Next: Configure Instance Details.
4. On the Configure Instance Details step you can choose the appropriate VPC and subnet settings. In some use cases the default settings will be appropriate, and in others you will need to select the appropriate settings. Once you have chosen the settings click Next: Add Storage.
5. On the Add Storage step we will need to add a volume to use as a repository. Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Backup Proxy will need a data disk attached running as a cache with S3 being the location where backup data is stored for long-term retention. The cache is stored in a JET database. For the best performance, it is recommended that st1 EBS volume is used. In general, size the EBS volume for 10% based on source size. Click Add New Volume and then select the Volume Type. In this example we use a 500gb ST1 volume. When you have added the volume to your specific needs then click Next: Add Tags.
6. On the Add Tags step you can choose to add tags to the instance if you would like. Otherwise click Next: Configure Security Group.
7. On the Configure Security Group step you have a few choices to make. You can create a new Security group for this instance, or you can select an existing group. In this guide we have chosen to deploy in the same security group that our Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 is in. If you choose a different security group its important to understand the ports that will be needed to be opened to allow communication to and from the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Server. Once you have selected your security group or created a new one with the required ports, then click Review and Launch.
8. Review all the settings and when complete click Launch.

Once the launch is complete, you can add the new instance as a Backup Proxy and Backup Repository in the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Server.