Azure Backup is an Azure-based service that can be used to backup (or protect) and restore your data in the Microsoft cloud. The existing on-premises or off-site backup solutions are replaced by Azure Backup with a cloud-based solution which is reliable, safe, and cost-competitive. Azure Backup offers many components that can be downloaded and deployed depending on what you want to protect.

Why use Azure Backup Traditional backup solutions have been made to treat the cloud as an endpoint, or destination for static storage, like disk or tape. Provides simplicity in approach, which is translated to an expensive, ineffective solution. Some other solutions might be expensive because you end up paying for the inappropriate type of storage or for which you don’t need it. Azure Backup provides these key benefits:

Automatic Storage Management –– Hybrid environment generally require different types of storage – some which are on-premises and some are in the cloud. Azure backup charges no cost for on-premises storage devices. Azure Backup can automatically allocate and manages backup storage. It renders pay-as-you-go means that you only pay for the storage that you consume.

Unlimited Scaling –Azure Backup uses the underlying power and unlimited scale of Azure Cloud to provide high availability without worrying about maintenance and monitoring overhead. Alerts could be set up to get information about the events taking place and need not worry about the high-availability in the cloud.

Multiple Storage Options –Azure Backup provides two types of storage replication: locally redundant storage and geo-redundant storage.

1. - Locally redundant storage (LRS) makes three copies of your data in a storage scale unit in a data centre. All these copies of data exist in the same region. It is operated on a low cost, protecting your data from local hardware failure.
2. - Geo-redundant storage (GRS) is the default option that can be recommended for replication of data stored. It replicated our data to a secondary region, far away from the primary region. GRS is more expensive than LRS, but with GRS you can get a higher level of durability for your data, even if there is a breakdown in the regional storage.

Unlimited Data Transfer – Azure Backup does not limit the amount of data you transfer. Azure backup doesn’t charge for the data that is transferred. If Azure Import/Export service is used to import a large amount of data, then their cost incurred with inbound data.

Data Encryption – Data encryption facilitates secure transmission and storage of your data in the public cloud. The encryption passphrase is stored locally, and it is never stored or transmitted in Azure. If there is a necessity to restore any of the data, only you have an encryption passphrase or key.

Application-Consistent Backup –An application-consistent backup means a recovery point consists of all required data to restore the backup copy. Azure Backup renders plication-consistent backups, ensuring that additional fixes are not required to restore the data. Reducing the restoration time and quickly return to the running state.

Long-Term Retention – Recovery Services vault can be used to access short-term and long-term data retention. The data can be kept in the vault if you intend. Azure Backup has a limit of 9999 recovery point where data can have protected instances.