Using Storware to backup MS365

Background
This article was written on 05-Feb-25 as a second article in the series of using Storware backup.
Please see my first article on setting up storware (https://medium.com/@sardhianto/using-storware-to-backup-hyper-v-using-nas-aa43df2e20b6)

Precautions
No precaution at the time of this writing.

Prerequisites
Storware backup is already running.
MS365 (at least basic) account is already running, hopefully at least with one sharepoint site.

Setting Up
As per my understanding, MS365 account also has a free tier of Azure Entra ID. So do not fear to venture into Azure even if you do not have an Azure account.

For unknown reason, the Storware Setup Assistant to register to MS365 does not work for me.
So I have to follow through with manual registration (https://storware.gitbook.io/backup-and-recovery/protecting-microsoft-365/microsoft-365-organization-management/configure-microsoft-365-access)

*Tips: At the time of this writing, Microsoft pushes the use of MFA, but I end up disabling my user MFA as it makes it more challenging to register Storware

Once you login to portal.azure.com, what you should do is open the EntraID.

Open Entra ID

On the left pane, select “App Registration” and follow through the guide by pressing “New registration”.

MS EntraID App registration

*Tips: on secret key creation, you only have one chance to see the secret value, so copy it somewhere else.
Please note that you need to copy the secret value, not secret ID

Copy Secret Value

Once finished, Storware will run inventory synchronization and you can see your user, groups, sharepoint and team sites.

MS365 inventory

Creating Backup Schedule
Before creating backup policy, we need to create our backup schedule.
*Tips: somehow there is no setting whether you want incremental or full backup. So it will always be full backup.
Similar to my earlier hyper-v vm backup, you need to create multiple schedule to set different backup retention days (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly).

Creating schedule, ignore rules for now

Example of multiple schedules

Example of monthly backup schedule

Example of yearly backup schedule

Creating Backup Policy
As there is no option to create multiple rules, then we have to create multiple backup policy to cater for our different backup retention period.

Select MS365 features to be backup and users, groups, sites, teams as necessary

No option to create multiple rules

Clone backup policy for easy multiple policy creation

Monitoring Backup
You can monitor backup in Dasboard or “Workflow Execution Console” lower screen.

Dashboard

Workflow Execution Console

Backup Restoration
Maybe I will update in the future if necessary.

That’s it for now, let me know if I need to clarify things!