5 Best Practices for Azure Backup and Recovery

At a time when businesses are generating huge volumes of data required for running their operations, on-premises solutions are proving to be inefficient, expensive, and in some cases, unsafe. There are financial and legal consequences and organizations must take precautions with proper backup and recovery solutions as a part of the business continuity and disaster recovery strategy. The best way to safeguard critical data is by replicating it to an environment other than its original storage space. This is possible with cloud solutions and Azure Backup is one of the leading services in the space with its scalability and redundancy. Let us explore some useful strategies for using cloud solutions with 5 best practices for Azure Backup and recovery.

• Assess Your Requirements

  Different cloud recovery solutions cater to diverse requirements. Microsoft itself offers distinct recovery, archiving, and backup solutions. The Azure Site Recovery (ASR) service is a solution for keeping business applications and workloads functional on physical infrastructure and virtual machines when there is an outage. Azure Blob storage can be used to archive on-premises data. Azure Backup, on the other hand, is a solution for backing up on-premises/ cloud data and applications to the cloud. You need an Azure Backup subscription if you are specifically trying to protect either your data or applications or both.

• Evaluate Storage Requirements

  Azure Backup can back up files, folders, system states, SQL servers, SAP HANA databases, and VMs. It can be used for reducing dependence on on-premises backups, automating storage management, and ensuring the security of data in rest and transit. However, there are limitations on backing up files and folders using Microsoft Azure Recovery Services (MARS) Agent for Azure Backup. It cannot accommodate read-only volumes, BitLocker-protected volumes, offline volumes, removable media, or network shares. Additionally, the New Technology File System (NTFS) is the only supported file system for backing up files using Azure Backup services.

• Estimate Resource Utilization and Costs

  Azure Backup service is offered with flexible pricing plans. These plans are based on the number of instances to be protected, the quantity of data stored, and the choice of storage model between locally redundant storage (LRS) or geo-redundant storage (GRS). Because the price calculation has so many variables, users must estimate factors like how much bandwidth will be required, the frequency of backup schedules, the number of policies that need to be created, the number of items that need to be protected, and other parameters while implementing Azure Backup.

• Optimize for Performance

  The key to the optimal performance of Azure Backup lies in the appropriate policy configuration. Because VM disks are backed up in parallel, it is important to ensure that VMs are backed up at different times. Additionally, the time lag between creating snapshots and copying to the vault must also be accounted for. It would be ideal to use different storage accounts while ensuring adequate load balancing in the disks to ensure optimal backup speed. Also, ensure that protected disks undergoing daily backups do not have a daily churn exceeding 200 GB.

• Identify Right Recovery Options

  Azure Backup service provides flexibility in restoring backed-up workloads. Not only is it possible to select an appropriate recovery point, but also different restore options. Users can create a new VM from the restore point, or restore a VM disk, which in turn can be used to create a new VM. Alternatively, it is possible to restore a disk and replace one on an existing VM. This option can be used for customizing newly created VMs, making changes to configurations or naming conventions of resources, or adding VMs to an availability set. The choice of the recovery option is dictated by the purpose of the recovery. The Instant Restore option can improve backup and recovery performance.

Apps4Rent Can Help with Azure Backup

An organization’s protection goals should decide the type and frequency of data backups. These 5 best practices for Azure Backup and recovery should help you protect and restore your files, folders, and VMs if you have decided on using Azure Backup services. If you are unsure of what solution to use or need assistance in setting up Azure Backup or allied Azure services, reach out to Apps4Rent. We are a Tier 1 Microsoft CSP with over 16 years of experience in implementing IT solutions for 10000+ clients across the globe. Contact us today via phone, chat, or email for free assistance.