The best Azure learning site: Azure Documentation Center / Microsoft Learning
Protect cloud VMs with Azure Backup
I talked to you about what Azure Backup is and what conveniences it can bring to us. Today I will talk to you about how to use Azure Backup to back up VMs in Azure.
When backing up data in Azure, the data is stored in Azure Recovery Services vault. In order to make it easy for us to back up data easily, Azure integrates the recovery service vault function into the setting menu of most services. But here, some friends may have to say, is it not very troublesome to handle the backup of each VM or database separately? Considering this problem, we can use the recovery service vault function to centrally manage these backups, by creating backup strategies and Applying this policy to the target virtual machine can easily back up multiple virtual machines. For more information, please refer to the following link:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-overview?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5002232
The Recovery Services vault contains backup data and backup policies applied to protected virtual machines. Backing up a virtual machine is a process done locally. Unable to back up a virtual machine in one location to a Recovery Services vault in another location. Therefore, at least one Recovery Services vault must exist in each Azure location that contains virtual machines to be backed up. Let's talk less, then let's take a look at how to use Azure Backup to protect our cloud VM resources.
Create Recovery Services Vault
Log in to Azure Portal, click on all services, search for recovery services, and then click on Recovery Service vaults:
On the Recovery Services vault dashboard, click Add:
Set the subscription, resource group, backup vault name and area according to your needs and click Create:
Confirm that it is correct and click Create:
The creation is successful, as shown in the following figure:
Set backup strategy
After creating a Recovery Services vault, the next step is to configure the data type and set up backup strategies for the vault. A backup strategy is a plan for the frequency and time of recovery point creation. In addition, the strategy also includes the retention range of recovery points.
Open the Recovery Services vault dashboard and click Backup:
On this page, we can select the location (local/cloud) and resource type (VM, database, etc.) of the resource to be backed up, keep the default, and click Next:
By default, the Recovery Services Vault will provide us with a default strategy. If we want to create a backup strategy based on our needs, we can click to create a strategy:
Choose a graphics card in the backup strategy, set the following information, and then click OK:
Policy name: The display name of the backup policy
Backup frequency: Here you can set how often to back up, and the time of each backup, and you can also select the time zone
Retention period of daily backup points: set the daily profit period of the points according to the needs
Retention period of weekly backup points: Set the retention period of weekly backups according to requirements
Retention period of monthly backup points: Set the retention period of monthly backups according to requirements
Add VM resources to be backed up
After creating the backup strategy, under the virtual machine, click Add:
Select the virtual machine we want to back up. By default, all disks of the virtual machine will be backed up. Of course, we can also choose to back up only the system disk, and then click Enable backup:
After enabling backup, under the Backup Items tab, you can see that we have two days of virtual machines and are protected:
Initial backup
Under normal circumstances, after we enable the recovery service vault backup for the resource, the initial backup will not be created immediately because of the backup plan. According to the best practice of disaster recovery, the initial backup should be started manually to protect our data.
On the backup vault dashboard, click 2 under the backup item to open the backup item menu:
On the backup item menu, select Azure virtual machine to open the list of virtual machines associated with the vault:
In the list of backup items, select the ellipsis "..." to open the context menu:
Click Back up now:
Set the deadline for backup retention, and then click OK:
You can monitor the progress of the job on the backup job page. Creating the initial backup may take some time, depending on the size of the virtual machine:
After the initial backup job is completed, its status can be checked in the backup job menu. The on-demand backup job has created an initial restore point for the virtual machine SS. To back up other virtual machines, you can repeat the above operations for each virtual machine.
In the above steps, we showed you how to use Azure Backup to back up virtual machines in the cloud in the recovery service vault. In fact, in addition to this method, we can also enable backup of resources on the backup tab of the VM:
Well, here I have introduced you how to use Azure Backup to protect cloud VMs, I hope it will help you.