Backup Solution

​​Azure Backup is the Azure-based service you can use to back up (or protect) and restore your data in the Microsoft cloud. Azure Backup replaces your existing on-premises or off-site backup solution with a cloud-based solution that is reliable, secure, and cost-competitive. Azure Backup offers multiple components that you download and deploy on the appropriate computer, server, or in the cloud. The component, or agent, that you deploy depends on what you want to protect. All Azure Backup components (no matter whether you’re protecting data on-premises or in the cloud) can be used to back up data to a Recovery Services vault in Azure.

 

Why use Azure Backup

Traditional backup solutions have evolved to treat the cloud as an endpoint, or static storage destination, similar to disks or tape. While this approach is simple, it is limited and doesn’t take full advantage of an underlying cloud platform, which translates to an expensive, inefficient solution. Other solutions are expensive because you end up paying for the wrong type of storage, or storage that you don’t need. Other solutions are often inefficient because they don’t offer you the type or amount of storage you need, or administrative tasks require too much time. In contrast, Azure Backup delivers these key benefits:

Automatic Storage Management

​Hybrid environments often require heterogeneous storage – some on-premises and some in the cloud. With Azure Backup, there is no cost for using on-premises storage devices. Azure Backup automatically allocates and manages backup storage, and it uses a pay-as-you-use model. Pay-as-you-use means that you only pay for the storage that you consume.

Unlimited Scaling

Azure Backup uses the underlying power and unlimited scale of the Azure cloud to deliver high-availability – with no maintenance or monitoring overhead. You can set up alerts to provide information about events, but you don’t need to worry about high-availability for your data in the cloud.

Multiple Storage Options

An aspect of high-availability is storage replication. Azure Backup offers two types of replication: locally redundant storage and geo-redundant storage. Choose the backup storage option based on need:

  • Locally redundant storage (LRS) replicates your data three times (it creates three copies of your data) in a storage scale unit in a datacenter. All copies of the data exist within the same region. LRS is a low-cost option for protecting your data from local hardware failures.
  • Geo-redundant storage (GRS) is the default and recommended replication option. GRS replicates your data to a secondary region (hundreds of miles away from the primary location of the source data). GRS costs more than LRS, but GRS provides a higher level of durability for your data, even if there is a regional outage.​

Unlimited Data Transfer

Azure Backup does not limit the amount of inbound or outbound data you transfer. Azure Backup also does not charge for the data that is transferred. However, if you use the Azure Import/Export service to import large amounts of data, there is a cost associated with inbound data. Outbound data refers to data transferred from a Recovery Services vault during a restore operation.

Data Encryption

​Data encryption allows for secure transmission and storage of your data in the public cloud. You store the encryption passphrase locally, and it is never transmitted or stored in Azure. If it is necessary to restore any of the data, only you have encryption passphrase, or key.

Application-Consistent Backup

An application-consistent backup means a recovery point has all required data to restore the backup copy. Azure Backup provides application-consistent backups, which ensure additional fixes are not required to restore the data. Restoring application-consistent data reduces the restoration time, allowing you to quickly return to a running state.

Long Term Retention

You can use Recovery Services vaults for short-term and long-term data retention. Azure doesn’t limit the length of time data can remain in a Recovery Services vault. You can keep data in a vault for as long as you like. Azure Backup has a limit of 9999 recovery points per protected instance. ​