Azure backup and recovery

Based on Microsoft’s Shared Responsibility Models, it’s the user’s responsibility to plan and implement a backup and recovery strategy for their data in Azure. There are native services in place that allow you to back up Azure virtual machines (VMs), and there are many vendors that offer Agent-based approach for both Microsoft Azure backup and on-premises workloads. However, data protection in the cloud isn't always straightforward, so leveraging limited or legacy backup methods can present certain challenges.

First, snapshots of Azure VMs are not real backups and therefore cannot be leveraged for long-term data retention and recovery. Aged snapshots are also costly when they’re kept in Azure for longer than a few days. Manual scripting in order to automate native Azure VM snapshots can quickly become very complex, especially in large environments.

Secondly, an agent-based approach for Microsoft Azure backup is not the best option either, since agents require resource-intensive deployment, are hard to scale appropriately and they take up additional VM space.

Whenever you leverage a cloud-native backup solution like Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure, an image-based backup is created automatically from the native Azure VM snapshots, based on chosen backup policy. This allows for greater control and management of your daily data protection operations and policy deployments along with improved application-aware processing and quicker recoveries for Azure VMs.

For more details, watch this short video.

In short, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure can automatically create and manage snapshots and backups of Azure VMs (including managed or unmanaged VHDs), plus VM configuration. Backup chains can be created with image-level backups or with snapshots. Image-level backups can include full and incremental backups. Cloud-native snapshots include point-in-time snapshots. Recovery can be performed at the full- or file-level in just seconds.

1. With Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure you can protect data on your Azure VMs either through snapshots or backups, all with purpose-built, cloud-native tools. Combining both snapshots and backups gives you the flexibility to choose the best option to protect your Azure data, whether that be a specific file, a few testing VMs or large production environments. Snapshots are great for testing and upgrades when you may need to roll back quickly to a certain point in time. However, for longer retention and proper recovery purposes, backups are the way to go for protecting Azure data. Backup files will be stored in Microsoft Azure Blob, and you can choose a cool storage option for lower costs.
   
2. Whenever we create a backup file based on Azure VM snapshots or perform a recovery from that image-based backup file, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure deploys temporary instances called workers that are deployed to Azure accounts only when you need to create a backup from a snapshot or create a restore.
   • You can either create specific configurations for each Azure region where you want workers deployed or let Veeam can do that for you automatically so you don’t have to set them up for each and every region.
3. Once the image-based backup file for Azure VMs are created, you can choose to store it either in hot or cool storage tiers depending on what’s the desired data retention policy.
4. You have multiple policy options to choose from. You can define which Microsoft Azure accounts you’re going to back up in each region, choose whether you want to back up separate Azure VMs or use a tag-based policy so that you don’t have to manually add each new VM to your Azure backup policy.
5. Choose from multiple schedule options for both Azure snapshots (down to 60 snapshots per hour) and backups to satisfy even the most stringent service level agreements (SLAs). Define how long you’d like to keep snapshots and backups of your Azure data.
   • Scheduling options also allow you to specify where you’d like to keep your Azure shapshots or backups. Choose from hot and cool storage options with Azure Blob. Veeam recommends that you use the cool storage tier option for Azure backup files as it significantly lowers the cost of storage.
6. Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure provides an built-in calculation tool that will automatically estimate the cost of your configurated backup policy for Microsoft Azure data. These calculations are provided up front when you configure the Azure backup policy and will be broken down to the monthly cost of your Azure Blob storage, with traffic charged to move between regions and even charge estimates for moving backup data in and out of Azure Blob storage.
7. Finally, you can choose from multiple restore options for your backed-up Azure data. You can quickly restore an entire Azure VM, virtual disk or specific individual files. As with the Azure backup process, workers will be deployed and attached to a specific point-in-time. Then you’ll get a URL within the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure interface that you can open in a separate tab and browse for the exact data you want to restore.

All in all, going from the Azure marketplace to connecting the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure appliance to your account and setting up the backup policy so it’s ready for action takes no more than 15 minutes!

Microsoft does not keep backups of your data. Per their Shared Responsibility Model, it is your responsibility to ensure that your data is secured and protected, depending on whether it is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Software as a Service (SaaS) that’s being consumed.

The backup and recovery of data in Microsoft Azure remains the responsibility of the end user, according to the Microsoft Shared Responsibility Model. Without backup and recovery, your applications and/or data can’t be restored to overcome data loss due to accidental deletion, cybersecurity threats, ransomware, outage, etc. Veeam delivers enterprise-grade Azure backup and recovery that’s cost-effective and secure, so you’re protected against any cloud data loss.

For more details, check out documentation for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure allows you to create image-level backup chains from native Azure VM snapshots.

Both full and incremental backup files will be included into the following chains:

• Full: A full backup file with a copy of the full Azure VM image.
• Incremental: Incremental backup files that keep incremental changes of Azure VM images.

We leverage the forever-forward incremental backup method to create a backup chain for Microsoft Azure VMs. This means that during the first backup session, a full backup file will be created in a backup repository from a copied Azure VM image. This will be a starting point for the backup chain and Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure will further copy only the data blocks that have changed since.

Both full and incremental backup files will serve as restore points for your Microsoft Azure backups and you can easily roll back to a point-in-time of your choosing.