Microsoft Azure Backup and Restore

1. Microsoft Azure Backup and Restore Azure Backup Service Overview Azure Cloud Backup Services takes consistent Virtual Machine snapshots, as well as enabling Azure IaaS Virtual Machines to back up their data to Azure Storage. This capability has been further bolstered by the introduction of Recovery Services Vaults (Backup and ASR combined) for Azure Resource Manager. Here are some of the key benefits that Azure Backup provides. Feat Feature ure Benefit Benefit Automatic storage Automatic storage management management No capital expenditure is needed for on-premises storage devices. Azure Backup automatically allocates and manages backup storage, and it uses a pay-as-you-use consumption model. Unlimited scaling Unlimited scaling Take advantage of high availability guarantees without the overhead of maintenance and monitoring. Azure Backup uses the underlying power and scale of the Azure cloud, with its nonintrusive auto scaling capabilities. Multiple storage Multiple storage options options Choose your backup storage based on need. Storage options for Azure Recovery Services Vaults is outlined in section 3.4.4 of this document. Unlimited data Unlimited data transfer transfer There is no charge for any egress (outbound) data transfer during a restore operation from the Backup vault. Data inbound to Azure is also free, it works with the import service where it is available. Data encryption Data encryption Data encryption allows for secure transmission and storage of customer data in the public cloud. The encryption passphrase is stored at the source, and it is never transmitted or stored in Azure. The encryption key is required to restore all data, and only the customer has full access to the data that resides in the service. Application Application- - consistent backup consistent backup Application-consistent backups on Windows helps to ensure that fixes are not needed at the time of restore, which reduces the recovery time objective. This will allow customers to return to a running state efficiently. Long Long- -term retention retention term Rather than pay for off-site tape backup solutions, Customers can back up to Azure, which provides a compelling tape-like solution at a low cost. Table 1 – Azure Backup Benefits

2. Azure Backup Azure Cloud backup leverages incremental backup technology providing a pay as you go, highly scalable solution. These incremental backups can be tailored via the use of policies, to suit the business requirements. Azure backup also uses compression and network throttling to further optimize consumption. Through the configuration of the Azure Recovery Services agent on a windows machine, Azure can also perform file and folder backups Backup Storage Backup storage has evolved over many years, some of the challenges associated with data storage have changed, while some remain. Media - Tapes Backups were traditionally stored on removal media such as optical media or magnetic tape media (the most common). This introduced logistics and storage challenges to ensure tapes were correctly stored, rotated, and transported to an offsite facility. Virtual Tape Libraries (VTLs) The introduction of VTLs was designed to improve backup performance, enabling backups to be written to disks in a VTL and gradually migrated to the slower tape devices. This enables backups to complete overnight and gradually migrate to tape during the day. Disk Based Backups As spindle capacity has increased and storage costs reduced the introduction of disk based backups has become more popular, reducing backup and restore times. Disk based backups should be replicated to at least one other site to provide guard against facility failure. Azure Backup Storage Azure backup provides two options to retain your data: Locally redundant storage (LRS)  Locally redundant storage maintains three copies of your data. LRS is replicated three times within a single facility (Microsoft Datacentre) in a single region. LRS protects your data from normal hardware failures, but not from the failure of a single facility. Geo-redundant storage (GRS)  GRS maintains six copies of your data. With GRS, your data is replicated three times within the primary region, and is also replicated three times in a secondary region, providing the highest level of durability.