This episode is about the Azure Backup Service, and how we can restore a virtual machine. I have already a Windows Server 2016 Datacenter VM created, so we will continue from there and create a file, run a backup, and then restore the file system. Azure Backup Service is part of the AZ-303 exam for becoming an Azure Solution Architect.
Make sure you have a Windows Server up and running. Go first into the overview of the VM and open the menu. You will find Backup there.
The first you will be asked is to provide a Recovery Service Vault. If you don’t have one, you can create it from here. When I did this, I had some issues later, and I had to create a new VM and use the Recovery Service Vault that I created before. The same happened to others as well, just so you know. Next, click on Create a new policy.
In this pane you can set up when you want Azure to take a backup of your VM, daily or weekly and what time. You can now specify the retention of backup points, weekly, monthly, or yearly.
Let’s now login to the Windows Server first. I got a public IP address, so I won’t use Azure Bastion as I usually do.
I open the file explorer and create a text file that I name Test. My goal is to restore this file later after I have deleted it.
Create file
I have opened the Azure portal from within the Windows Server because we will soon install a tool that we will download from here. But first I clicked on Backup in the menu of the VM and hit on Backup now.
Backup VM in Azure
You will get asked for how long you need the backup. I stick to the default.
Retention time of VM backup
Just to show you that the backup is in progress. I clicked on View all jobs which you also find under the Backup-menu.
View all jobs in VM backup
We see that the backup is on its way. The backup took about an hour, and I didn’t install anything there, I just created a file.
Backup of VM in progress
Let’s now switch back to the Windows Server, and into the file explorer to delete the file I just created. We want to restore the file-system and see if we get the file back.
Delete a text file in Windows
I’m back in the portal, and ready for running a file recovery.
File recovery in Azure
We get asked about what recovery point we would like to restore. As we just have one, the choice is easy. Then we click on Download Executable. This takes about a minute. It’s not only an executable we get, but also a password that we need to run the executable.
Download executable for file recovery
Once ready, we click on Download, and copy the password.
Download, and copy the password
The executable we reside in the Downloads-folder of the Dedicated VM. Double-click to run.
Run the installation
Use now the password you copied.
Proceed with installation
A PowerShell window opens, and tell you to wait a moment. Once finished, we get two new drives.
PowerShell runs the installation
So, we got two drives. One is reserved for the installation process, and the other (G:) has the restored file-system which includes the file we created and deleted.
File recovery mounted two new drives
Why use Azure Backup?
Azure Backup delivers these key benefits:
Offload on-premises backup: Azure Backup offers a simple solution for backing up your on-premises resources to the cloud. Get short and long-term backup without the need to deploy complex on-premises backup solutions.
Back up Azure IaaS VMs: Azure Backup provides independent and isolated backups to guard against accidental destruction of original data. Backups are stored in a Recovery Services vault with built-in management of recovery points. Configuration and scalability are simple, backups are optimized, and you can easily restore as needed.
Scale easily - Azure Backup uses the underlying power and unlimited scale of the Azure cloud to deliver high-availability with no maintenance or monitoring overhead.
Get unlimited data transfer: Azure Backup doesn't limit the amount of inbound or outbound data you transfer, or charge for the data that's transferred.
Outbound data refers to data transferred from a Recovery Services vault during a restore operation.
If you perform an offline initial backup using the Azure Import/Export service to import large amounts of data, there's a cost associated with inbound data. Learn more.
Keep data secure: Azure Backup provides solutions for securing data in transit and at rest.
Centralized monitoring and management: Azure Backup provides built-in monitoring and alerting capabilities in a Recovery Services vault. These capabilities are available without any additional management infrastructure. You can also increase the scale of your monitoring and reporting by using Azure Monitor.
Get app-consistent backups: 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 aren't required to restore the data. Restoring application-consistent data reduces the restoration time, allowing you to quickly return to a running state.
Retain short and long-term data: You can use Recovery Services vaults for short-term and long-term data retention.
Automatic storage management - Hybrid environments often require heterogeneous storage - some on-premises and some in the cloud. With Azure Backup, there's 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. So you only pay for the storage you consume. Learn more about pricing.
Multiple storage options - Azure Backup offers three types of replication to keep your storage/data highly available.
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's a regional outage.
Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) replicates your data in availability zones, guaranteeing data residency and resiliency in the same region. ZRS has no downtime. So your critical workloads that require data residency, and must have no downtime, can be backed up in ZRS.
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