Azure Backup

Azure Backup is a multi-tenanted hybrid PaaS service built in Azure to provide reliable, secure offsite backups in Azure. It can back up on-premises data in Azure coming either from Windows-based servers or from DPM servers as well as provide backups for IaaS or PaaS applications running in Azure. It offers the following key features:

 Security All Azure backups are encrypted at source, during transmission, and stored encrypted in Azure. The encryption key is stored at source and is the only way to restore any of the data stored in Azure, so the customer is in full control of access to the data in the service.

 Reliability Customers have the choice of using locally redundant storage (LRS), where three copies of the data are created in the Azure datacenter, or geo-replication storage (GRS), where an additional three copies are created at a geo-separated datacenter to ensure data is highly resilient and available even in the case of an Azure-level disaster.

 Long-term retention When customers consider Azure as a backup location, they typically want to use it as a long-term retention target driven by compliance and/or disaster recovery requirements. Traditionally, this is done using tape backups, but Azure provides a more compelling alternative, and there are various studies available that show total cost of ownership for a cloud backup is superior to tape backups in the long run.

 Simplicity It has a familiar interface that can scale to protect a few servers and to handle large-scale server deployments. Future enhancements include a central management that enables customers to centrally manage all the backup infrastructure.

 Efficiency After the initial copy is seeded in Azure, incremental backups are taken as per the backup policy, compressed, encrypted, and sent to Azure where they are stored as incrementals. This optimizes network utilization during transfer as well as storage consumption in Azure, both of which are key factors to keep in mind when sending data to Azure.

 Cost effectiveness Azure Backup pricing includes a per-instance backup management fee and the cost of storage consumed on Azure. A key value offered with Azure Backup is that restore operations do not incur egress charges. This information is updated frequently, so please visit the product page.

Source of Information : Microsoft System Center