Hi there

In this post I’m covering how to protect your vms on Azure by using RSV (recovery service vault) to backup your vms and its data.

Quick option: you don’t have a Recovery Services Vault and you want to protect your VMs.

Go to your Azure subscription

Select the VM and go to operations \ backup

To make you don’t a Recovery Service Vault created and available click on select existing.

If you don’t have one you” see “no available items“

Switch back to create new and follow its default options or change if you need.

You have the following items

  • name: right below create new option 
  • resource group: your VM default’s resource group. However, you have the option “create new” right below this option
  • choose backup policy:  (new) DailyPolicy 
  • Backup policy specifies frequency and time at which items will be backed up and how long backup copies are retained.
  • Backup Frequency is set Daily at 2:00 AM UTC
  • Instant Restore is set to recovery snapshot(s) for 2 day(s)
  • Retention Range it’s the retention of daily backup point: is taken every day at 2:00 AM for 180 Day(s).

Now click on Enable Backup button.

When deployment is finished click on “go o the resource group” or go back to your azure resource group i.e. TRIAL

Search for the vault (vault536) and click on it

Navigate to the Protected items \ Backup items

You should see a new blade with Backup management type and backup item count columns.

Click on the Azure Virtual Machine (which it’s supposed to have 1 as item count)

You should see the vm selected before : vm-cis-01, under the resource group: TRIAL with backup and check last backup status and latest restore point options and its warning and information displayed.

Select / click on the vm name

The previous screen warning under Last backup status was flagged as Warning(initial backup pending) wait a few minutes until  backup is initiated and that warning should be cleared.

You can also explore the following options and links available

  • View all Alerts
  • View all Jobs
  • vault536
  • DailyPolicy

And a click here under Restore points (this restore point list is filtered for the last 30 days)

Go back to the Vault

select now Manage \ backup policies

check the backup policies available:

  • HourlyLogBackup (for SQL server in Azure VM)
  • DefaultPolicy (for Azure Virtual Machine)
  • DailyPolicy (for Azure Virtual Machine) > the policy created when we started this demo.

Select the DailyPolicy 

Click Modify to make any changes on this policy.

 

you have the following options:

  • Backup schedule: frequency, time and timezone
  • Instant Restore
  • Retention range

Go back to the Vault home screen

select Monitoring \ backup jobs to check all jobs’ status

If you want to test the backup without waiting on the dailypolicy scheduled time go back to the VM \ backup and click “backup now” and on the next screen select the retention you want to define and wait until is completed.

You should see “Triggering backup for vm-cis-01” on Information blade.

Click on the backup jobs to follow along the task

  • you should see the operation backup as in progress status
  • you have the options to export jobs, refresh, filter and choose columns above
  • click on the in progress status item to see its details
  • at sub tasks you should see take snapshot and transfer data to vault progress (not started, in progress, failed, etc.)

 

References

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/tutorial-restore-disk
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/tutorial-backup-vm-at-scale
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/tutorial-backup-azure-vm
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/quick-backup-vm-portal

Thanks,

Thiago Beier
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