What is Azure Backup?
Azure Backup is a cloud-based backup service that’s a core component of the Microsoft Azure platform. It’s designed to protect a wide range of Azure resources and even on-premises workloads. Whether you’re dealing with accidental deletions, hardware failures, ransomware attacks, or even regional outages, Azure Backup aims to ensure your data remains accessible and recoverable.
Key features of Azure Backup include:
- Centralized Management: All backup jobs and configurations are managed from a single location, the Recovery Services vault or Azure Backup Center. This simplifies administration and provides a comprehensive overview of your backup strategy.
- Data Encryption: Your data is encrypted both at rest and in transit, protecting it from unauthorized access and potential breaches.
- Automated Backups: Schedule backups to run automatically at specific intervals, eliminating the need for manual intervention.
- Incremental Backups: Only changes made since the last backup are captured, reducing storage consumption and network bandwidth usage.
- Long-Term Retention: Flexible retention policies allow you to keep backups for extended periods, aligning with your compliance and data preservation needs.
In essence, Azure Backup is a versatile and robust solution that addresses the multifaceted challenges of data protection in the cloud. It provides a centralized, secure, and automated approach to backing up your critical data assets, ensuring that you’re prepared for the unexpected and can recover quickly in the event of data loss.
Azure Backup Supported Services
Azure Backup’s versatility extends to a wide range of services within the Azure ecosystem, ensuring comprehensive protection for your critical data assets:
- Azure Virtual Machines (VMs): Safeguard your entire virtual machine infrastructure, whether they run Windows or Linux. Azure Backup can create application-consistent backups on both Windows and Linux VMS.
- SQL Databases: Protect your SQL Server databases, hosted either in Azure VMs or SQL database instances. Read more: Azure SQL Database Backup. Azure Backup offers point-in-time recovery and long-term retention options to ensure your databases are always recoverable.
- Azure File Shares: Secure your file shares, a fundamental component of collaboration and data storage. Azure Backup protects against accidental deletions, corruption, and other data loss scenarios.
- On-Premises Servers: Extend the protection of Azure Backup to your physical or virtual servers residing in your own data center. This hybrid backup approach provides a unified solution for both cloud and on-premises workloads.
- Other Azure Services: Azure Backup supports a variety of other Azure services, including:
- SAP HANA: Protect your mission-critical SAP HANA databases running on Azure VMs.
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Safeguard your containerized applications and data in AKS clusters.
- Azure Blobs and Files: Back up unstructured data stored in Azure Storage accounts.
Azure Backup Pricing
Azure Backup pricing is based on the size of protected instances and the storage used. Costs are determined by the type of workload being backed up, with separate charges for backup storage.
Pricing for Protected Instances
The cost for backing up virtual machines, SQL databases, and files depends on the total size of the protected data before compression and encryption:
- Instances ≤ 50 GB: $5 per month + storage costs
- Instances > 50 GB and ≤ 500 GB: $10 per month + storage costs
- Instances > 500 GB: $10 per 500 GB increment + storage costs
For example, a 1.2 TB instance would cost $30 per month plus storage charges, as it includes two full 500 GB increments ($10 each) and one 200 GB increment ($10).
Backup Storage Costs
Backup storage is charged separately and automatically scales based on data retention needs. Pricing varies based on storage redundancy options:
- Standard Tier (Primary Backup Storage):
- Locally Redundant Storage (LRS): $0.0224 per GB
- Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS): $0.028 per GB
- Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS): $0.0448 per GB
- Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage (RA-GRS): $0.0569 per GB
- Archive Tier (For Long-Term Retention, Over 6 Months):
- LRS: $0.0027 per GB
- GRS/RA-GRS: $0.0054 per GB
- ZRS is not available for Archive Tier
Reserved Capacity for Cost Savings
For organizations with large backup requirements, Azure offers Backup Storage Reserved Capacity, which provides discounted pricing for committing to 1-year or 3-year plans in increments of 100 TB or 1 PB.
Example pricing for Standard Tier, Locally Redundant Storage (LRS):
- 1-year commitment: $24,222 for 100 TB/month
- 3-year commitment: $66,060 for 100 TB/month
Additional Costs and Considerations
- Early Deletion Fees: Data moved to the Archive tier is subject to a 180-day early deletion fee if deleted before the retention period expires.
- Instant Restore Snapshots: Snapshots used for instant restore are charged as Disk snapshots separately from backup storage.
- Data Transfer Costs: Azure Backup does not charge for any restore operations or outbound network bandwidth (egress) associated with restore operations.
- Proration of Charges: If you start protecting a machine to Azure in the middle of the month, usage is prorated based on the number of days in that month the instance has been protected.
5 Best Practices for Using Azure Backup
1. Assess Your Backup Requirements
Before implementing Azure Backup, evaluate your organization’s backup and recovery needs. Consider factors such as regulatory compliance, recovery time objectives (RTOs), recovery point objectives (RPOs), and workload criticality. Some industries, such as healthcare and finance, require strict data retention policies and encryption standards.
It’s also important to distinguish between backup and disaster recovery. Azure Backup is designed for long-term data protection, allowing you to restore files, databases, and virtual machines (VMs) when needed. However, if your organization requires high availability and failover during outages, Azure Site Recovery might be necessary in addition to Azure Backup. Site Recovery replicates workloads in real-time and enables seamless failover to a secondary location in case of a disaster.
Keep in mind that not all data requires frequent backups. Classify data based on its importance, business value, and required retention period. For example, transaction logs of databases may need hourly backups, while archived files may only require monthly or yearly snapshots.
2. Optimize Backup Costs and Performance
To minimize costs while ensuring data protection, consider the following:
- Choose the right storage redundancy:
- Locally Redundant Storage (LRS) is cost-effective but stores data in a single Azure region.
- Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS) keeps copies in a secondary region, ensuring higher durability.
- Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS) balances cost and availability by replicating data across multiple availability zones.
- Use incremental backups: Instead of backing up full data copies every time, Azure Backup stores only changed data blocks, significantly reducing storage consumption.
- Leverage compression: Built-in compression reduces the backup size by 30-40%, lowering storage costs.
- Throttling and offline backups: If bandwidth is a concern, configure backup throttling to control network usage or use Azure Import/Export and Data Box for large-scale initial backups.
Additionally, organizations with large backup storage needs can save costs using Backup Storage Reserved Capacity, which offers discounted pricing for 1-year or 3-year commitments.
3. Monitor Backup Performance and Recovery Time
Understanding backup performance and recovery speed is crucial to meeting business continuity requirements. Backup and restore times depend on multiple factors:
- Snapshot creation time – The time taken to capture VM snapshots varies based on disk size and workload type.
- Azure Backup service queue – During peak hours, backups may be queued along with other Azure customers.
- Data transfer time – Larger backups take longer to upload and restore, depending on network speed and storage type.
4. Recovery Considerations
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) defines the maximum time an organization can afford to restore a service after data loss. Recovery Point Objective (RPO) defines how much data loss is acceptable in a failure scenario. Azure Backup allows flexible scheduling, but you must test whether your backup frequency meets your RTO and RPO targets.
For faster restores:
- Instant Restore: Retains snapshots for a short period, allowing quick VM recovery without retrieving data from the vault.
- Parallel disk restores: Azure Backup restores multiple disks simultaneously to reduce recovery time.
- On-premises restore options: Use MARS agent or Azure Backup Server to restore files, applications, or entire VMs to on-premises infrastructure.
If restoring data takes too long, adjust the backup frequency, retention settings, or network configurations to improve performance.
- Leverage cross-region restore for DR: Even if you’re using Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS), you can’t directly restore from a secondary region. To prepare for regional outages, enable Cross-Region Restore (CRR), which allows you to restore data from a different Azure region
- Optimize SQL backup frequency: Configure differential backups and transaction log backups at shorter intervals. This reduces data loss between backups and improves recovery efficiency for databases with frequent updates.
- Enforce backup compliance: Use Azure Policy to automatically enforce backup settings on new VMs, databases, or storage accounts, reducing the risk of missing critical assets.
- Enable immutable vaults to prevent ransomware impact: Prevent the modification or deletion of recovery points within a set retention period. This ensures that backups remain intact even if an attacker gains administrative access.
- Use backup tiers for cost-efficient long-term retention: Instead of storing all backups in expensive Standard Tier, move older backups to Archive Tier to reduce costs. Tip—you can automate this with N2W.
Beware of Common Azure Backup Gotchas and Pitfalls
While Azure Backup is a powerful tool, there are some common pitfalls and gotchas that can trip up even experienced users. Being aware of these challenges can help you avoid unnecessary headaches and ensure the effectiveness of your backup strategy:
- Bandwidth Considerations: Large data sets or frequent backups can consume significant network bandwidth. If you have limited bandwidth, consider scheduling backups during off-peak hours or using features like offline seeding with Azure Data Box.
- Restore Times and SLAs: While Azure Backup offers fast recovery options like instant restore snapshots, restoring large volumes of data can still take time. Understand your Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for recovery and plan accordingly.
- Long-Term Retention Costs: Long-term retention is essential, but it can also be expensive. Azure Backup offers different storage tiers with varying costs. Carefully evaluate your retention needs and choose the most cost-effective storage options.
- Misconfigured Policies: Incorrectly configured backup policies can lead to inadequate protection or unexpected costs. Double-check your policies to ensure they align with your RPO and RTO requirements.
- Monitoring and Alerting: Don’t just set and forget your backups. Regularly monitor the status of your backup jobs and set up alerts for failed or incomplete backups. This proactive approach allows you to address issues promptly.
- Testing Your Restores: It’s crucial to periodically test your restore procedures to verify that you can recover your data successfully. Don’t wait for a disaster to discover that your backups are not working as expected.
By being aware of these common pitfalls and taking proactive measures to address them, you can maximize the effectiveness of Azure Backup and ensure your data is always protected.
Related Content: Azure Backup Pricing
Azure Backup and What to Do Today
Azure Backup is your trusted ally in fortifying your cloud data against the unexpected. Let’s recap the essential takeaways and outline the steps you should take now to safeguard your Azure environment:
Key Takeaways:
- Don’t Limit Your Protection: Azure Backup isn’t just for virtual machines. It extends its protective reach to SQL databases, file shares, on-premises servers, and a wide array of other Azure services.
- Centralize for Control: The Recovery Services vault is your command center, streamlining backup management and providing a comprehensive view of your data protection strategy.
- Embrace Automation: Leverage Azure Backup’s automated scheduling and incremental backups to optimize efficiency and minimize manual intervention.
- Think Long-Term: Tailor retention policies to your specific needs, ensuring compliance and data availability for the long haul.
Action Items:
- Inventory Your Assets: Take stock of your critical data and workloads in Azure. What are the crown jewels that need unwavering protection?
- Define Your Recovery Goals: Establish clear RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective) targets. These will guide your backup frequency and restoration speed expectations.
- Craft Your Backup Strategy: Design backup policies that align with your RPO/RTO goals and the unique requirements of each workload. Don’t be afraid to create multiple policies for different types of data.
- Automate and Monitor: Schedule your backups to run automatically, and set up alerts to notify you of any failures or issues. Regular monitoring is key to ensuring ongoing data protection.
- Test, Test, Test: Don’t just assume your backups are working. Regularly perform restore tests to verify that you can recover your data quickly and reliably when it matters most.
Remember, your Azure Backup strategy isn’t a one-and-done task. As your environment evolves, so too should your backup procedures. Regularly review and update your policies to keep pace with your changing needs.
Azure Backup with N2W
Azure Backup is a powerful tool in your arsenal for protecting your valuable data. However, to truly fortify your defenses against data loss, consider a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery solution like N2W. N2W is the leading enterprise-grade backup tool on AWS and supports both AWS and Azure environments. It has proven its trust with thousands of customers like NASA, Philips and Accenture by providing ridiculously easy, seriously fast and highly secure automated backups plus instant restore capabilities, cost-effective archiving, and robust ransomware protection through immutability.
These are just some of the key advantages in using N2W:
- N2W is a set-it-and-forget-it unified platform that supports automated Disaster Recovery without any limitation on geography, speed or complexity. Organizations can copy backups as often as every 5 minutes and can even be copied across clouds in case of a ransomware attack or cloud provider glitch.
- Customers aren’t concerned with any data being given up to a third party. They feel secure by maintaining complete control of their environment, since N2W is deployed as IaaS within their own cloud environment.
- N2W provides data protection with the ability to perform DR drills regularly and automatically for your ENTIRE environment. In addition, these drills can simulate a full and complete healthy failover – go back to production with a single backup policy and tagging capabilities.
See how customers like Checkmarx manage their rapid growth on the cloud with N2W as a trusted long term partner.N2W’s layered approach ensures that your Azure environment is not only resilient to failures but also equipped to quickly bounce back with minimal disruption. Don’t leave your data’s safety to chance – explore how N2W can complement your Azure Backup strategy with a free trial.
See Additional Guides on Key Cybersecurity Topics
Together with our content partners, we have authored in-depth guides on several other topics that can also be useful as you explore the world of cybersecurity.
AWS Backup
Authored by N2W
- AWS Backup: Top 15 Questions, How It Works, Pricing and Pros/Cons
- How to estimate your AWS EBS snapshot pricing cost
- AWS Backup Vault: The Basics and a Quick Tutorial
S3 Backup
Authored by N2W
- S3 Backup: How It Works, Pricing, and 6 Key Considerations
- Archiving on Amazon S3: A Practical Guide
- Amazon S3 Glacier Backup: A Practical Guide
UEBA
Authored by Exabeam
- What Is UEBA (User and Entity Behavior Analytics)?
- Threat Detection and Response: How to Stay Ahead of Advanced Threats
What Is UEBA and Why It Should Be an Essential Part of Your Incident
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