Best Practices

Backup Scheduling

Microsoft has implemented tighter throttling limits on background apps, including content migration, data loss prevention, and backup solutions for SharePoint Online and OneDrive, during weekday daytime hours, to ensure that SharePoint and OneDrive services remain highly available and reliable for users who depend on the service more than ever in remote work scenarios. For additional details, see this Microsoft article.

You should expect that these background apps will achieve very limited throughput during these times. However, during the evening and weekend hours for the region, the service will be ready to process a significantly higher volume of requests from background apps. We now recommend the following scheduling practices to ensure successful backups:
  • Schedule backups outside of business hours.
  • You may also consider reducing the frequency of backups down to two or three as necessary during the workweek.

App Profile Authentication in Auto Discovery, Backup, and Restore

To help enhance security for your Microsoft 365 tenant and avoid SharePoint Online throttling during your backup jobs, you can create an app profile for Microsoft 365 and choose Use an app profile as the authentication method when you create an Auto Discovery scan profile.

To protect multiple service types by IBM® Storage Protect for Cloud, we recommend creating multiple IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Microsoft 365 service apps (created through App management > Modern mode) in IBM Storage Protect for Cloud.
  • IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Microsoft 365 (Exchange permissions) app, recommended for the backup and restore of Exchange Online and Public folders.
  • IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Microsoft 365 (SharePoint permissions) app, recommended for the backup and restore of SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Project Online.
  • IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Microsoft 365 (All permissions) app, recommended for the backup and restore of Teams, Microsoft 365 Groups, and Yammer.
  • To protect Viva Engage, you need both the Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365 (All permissions) app and the Viva Engage app.
  • The IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Microsoft 365 (delegated permissions) app is necessary for protecting Power BI, Power Automate, and Power Apps. Additionally, this app is required if you want to restore Teams channel conversations as posts or restore Planner task comments.

If you use only one IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Microsoft 365 app with all permissions to protect all services, there is an increased potential for throttling issues since every application has its own API call limit in a Microsoft tenant.

Note the following:

  • For more information on the app profile, Auto Discovery, and how to set up an Auto Discovery Profile, refer to the IBM Storage Protect for Cloud User Guide.
  • For site collections (of SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Groups, Teams, or Viva Engage), the hybrid mode is now provided. In the hybrid mode, IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Microsoft 365 jobs will, by default, use an app profile in backup and restore. For the data types that are unsupported in the app context, service account authentication will be used automatically. Note that the use of service accounts is not the recommended method as it attracts an increased potential for throttling issues. To learn more and enable the mode, contact the IBM support team.

EWS Throttling in Exchange

Microsoft uses throttling to manage Microsoft 365 operations, and throttling limits can affect backup performance. You can contact Microsoft support to adjust the following Exchange parameters to significantly reduce throttling in Microsoft 365.
  • EwsCutoffBalance: Unlimited
  • EwsMaxBurst: Unlimited
  • EwsRechargeRate: Unlimited
  • EWSMaxConcurrency: Highest limit