Introducing the Top 5+1 Benefits of Azure Backup Service

When a company is running and developing successfully, backup and disaster recovery are hardly the topics they focus on. However, with a business continuity plan not only the company’s assets can be secured, but all contingencies can be taken into account for the future. A business continuity plan is always built upon backup and recovery, but these two processes alone raise several questions and options.

Even if your company already has backup via redundant storage, it won’t provide protection from ransomware or human error, which can ultimately lead to data loss. Cloud based solutions are definitely the future forward choice irrespectively of the current location of your data.

A versatile and multi-component solution like Azure Backup could be seamlessly integrated into existing operations and always contain the value of scalability. Azure Backup can be used for data stored on-premises as well as in the cloud. It stores backups in a Recovery Services vault making it easy to organize the data and monitor all backed-up items in any vaults.

Whether your company has plans and solutions in case of data loss or is in the beginning of the backup process, here are five plus one of the most competitive benefits of implementing Microsoft’s solution, the Azure Backup service.

1. Easy to use and easy to scale

Intuitive interface simplifies data backup in terms of files, folders, SQL databases or entire Virtual Machines (VM). As Azure Backup uses the power and scalability of the Azure cloud the backed-up data can expand exponentially. It delivers high-availability with no maintenance.

2. Cost effectiveness

Being Azure’s built-in backup service, Azure Backup doesn’t require any infrastructure thus eliminates infrastructure cost and management overhead. Azure Backup automatically allocates and manages backup storage, and it uses a pay-as-you-use model.

3. Protection and comfort

Azure Backup provides solutions for securing data in transit and at rest. The solution offers built-in monitoring and alerting capabilities in a Recovery Services vault. These capabilities are available without any additional management infrastructure.

• Prevention: Complex authentication layer used for critical operations like Delete Backup Data, Change Passphrase. These operations require security PIN (when multifactor authentication is enabled) available only to users with valid Azure credentials.
• Alerting: Email notifications are sent for any critical operations that impact availability of backup data. These notifications enable users to detect attacks as soon as they occur.
• Recovery: Azure backup retains deleted backup data for 14 days ensuring recovery using any old or recent recovery points. Also, minimum number of recovery points are always maintained meaning that there are always sufficient number of points to recover from.

4. Multiple storage options

Azure Backup offers two types of replication to keep the data highly available. Locally redundant storage replicates the data three times in a storage scale unit in a datacenter. All copies of the data exist within the same region. It is a low-cost option for protecting data from local hardware failures. On the other hand geo-redundant storage is the default and recommended replication option. It replicates the data to a secondary region. Although it costs more than the former solution, but provides a higher level of durability for the data, even if there's a regional outage.

5. Quick restoration

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 the company to quickly return to a running state.

5+1. Site recovery

In the unfortunate case of losing an entire production site or any major IT outages, a business needs more complex solution than restoring a backup. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is a powerful service that provides disaster recovery capabilities by orchestrating replication, failover, and recovery of virtual machines. It supports business continuity by keeping business apps and workloads running during outages. It can be set up by replicating an Azure VM to a different Azure region directly from the Azure portal. As a fully integrated offering, Site Recovery is automatically updated with new Azure features as they’re released. Downtime is minimized and coverage can be scaled to as many business-critical applications as needed, backed by Azure’s service availability and support.

Many other options exist that can fit your company needs perfectly. If you are in doubt or would like to learn more about Azure Backup, our experts can provide you with tailor-made solutions that can easily be harmonized with your existing business continuity plan or can be used to build one from the start.