Azure Backup Design Patterns

Introduction:

In this article, my primary objective is to illuminate the crucial details for crafting a robust backup design that maximizes Azure Backup’s capabilities while adhering to best practices. Whether you’re a seasoned IT professional or a novice, this guide provides actionable insights to bolster your backup endeavors.

Foundational Concepts:

Backup serves as a critical safety net for data preservation and business continuity. Let’s break down its significance:

• Data Protection: Backup is creating duplicate copies of your data. These copies protect against accidental deletion, hardware failures, cyberattacks, or natural disasters. Without backups, you risk losing valuable information forever.
• Mitigating Risks: Human Errors: Employees can inadvertently delete files or overwrite critical data. Regular backups ensure that accidental mistakes don’t lead to permanent data loss.
• Hardware Failures: Hard drives, servers, and other storage devices can fail unexpectedly. Having backups allows you to recover data even if the original hardware crashes.
• Cybersecurity Threats: Ransomware attacks, viruses, and malware can encrypt or corrupt your data. Backups provide a way to restore clean, uninfected versions of your files.
• Natural Disasters: Fires, floods, earthquakes, or power outages can destroy physical servers. Off-site backups protect against such events.

Azure Backup is a robust, cloud-based data protection solution provided by Microsoft Azure. It enables organizations to safeguard their critical data assets in virtual machines (VMs), databases, file shares, or other Azure services. Here are some key points to understand:

• Built-In Solution: Azure Backup is natively integrated into the Azure platform, making it seamless to set up and manage.
• Zero-Infrastructure: Unlike traditional backup solutions that require on-premises infrastructure, Azure Backup operates without infrastructure overhead.
• Cost-Effective: Organizations pay only for the storage consumed by backups, eliminating the need for dedicated backup servers.

Azure Backup Components

Recovery Services Vault

The Recovery Services vault is the heart of Azure Backup. It serves as the central repository for storing backups and managing recovery points. Key features include:

• Scalability: The vault can accommodate backups from multiple Azure subscriptions and regions.
• Retention Policies: Define how long backups are retained based on business requirements.
• Encryption: Data stored in the vault is encrypted at rest for security.

Backup Policies

Backup policies play a crucial role in defining how backups are scheduled, retained, and managed. Here’s what you need to know:

• Frequency: Specify how often backups occur (e.g., daily, weekly).
• Retention: Determine how long backups are retained (e.g., 30 days, one year).
• Application-Aware Backups: Some workloads (like SQL databases) benefit from application-aware backups that ensure data consistency.

Data Tiering:

Backup data tiering in Azure Backup allows you to optimize storage costs by automatically moving backup data to different tiers based on access frequency. This functionality helps strike a balance between cost-effectiveness and data accessibility. Here’s a breakdown of the available tiers:

• Snapshot Tier: This tier provides the fastest access to backup data, which is ideal for frequently restored or accessed backups. However, it comes with the highest storage cost. Data is typically retained here for a short period (e.g., daily backups for the past week).
• Standard Tier: This tier offers a balance between cost and access times. It’s suitable for backups that might be needed for occasional restores or disaster recovery scenarios. Data in this tier incurs lower storage costs compared to the Snapshot tier.
• Archive Tier: This tier is the most cost-effective option, optimized for long-term backup retention. Accessing data from the Archive tier takes longer than other tiers but significantly reduces storage costs. This tier is ideal for rarely accessed backups but must be retained for compliance or archival purposes.

The following image can show you how these tiers work:

Questions for a good backup design:

• What are your workloads and their usage?
• What are the usage patterns for your workloads?
• What are the availability metrics (MTTR and MTBF)?
• What are the recovery metrics (RTO and POR)?
• What are the workload availability targets?
• What are your SLAs?

Azure Backup Prices

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/details/backup/

Azure Backup Best Practices

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/guidance-best-practices

Vault Considerations — Single or Multiple Vaults

• Single Vault: Simpler management for smaller setups. However, all backups are stored in one location. You cannot use a single vault to backup items on different regions.
• Multiple Vaults: Offers better organization and isolation for backups of different environments (e.g., dev/test vs. production). Can also improve disaster recovery capabilities by storing backups in geographically separate vaults.

Storage Replication Type

• Locally Redundant Storage (LRS): Most cost-effective option. Backups are replicated within the same data center. Offers basic redundancy against hardware failures within the data center.
• Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS): Backups are replicated across availability zones within the same region. Provides protection against data center outages.
• Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS): Backups are replicated to a secondary location in a geographically separate region. Offers the best disaster recovery capabilities.

Soft Delete Design

Allows accidental deletions of backups to be recovered for a certain period (configurable). Helps prevent permanent data loss from mistakes.

Cross Region Restore

Enables restoring backed-up data to a different Azure region in case of a disaster that affects the primary region.

Schedule (When to Take Backup)

Define how often backups are created (e.g., daily, weekly, etc.). More frequent backups improve recovery options but increase storage costs.

Retention Period

Specify how long backups are stored (e.g., 30 days, 7 years). Longer retention allows restoring data from older points in time but also increases storage costs.

Role-Based Access Control (Azure RBAC)

Assign specific permissions (roles) to users or groups, controlling who can access and manage backups within the vault.

Encryption of Data in Transit and at Rest

Azure Backup encrypts your data at rest (in storage) and in transit (during transfer) using industry-standard algorithms to protect your sensitive information.

Multi-User Authorization (MUA)

It’s a feature for Azure Active Directory that allows multiple users to manage an Azure resource collaboratively that can be applied on the Azure Vaults.

Ransomware Protection

Azure Backup’s immutable backups and soft delete functionality help protect your data from ransomware attacks. Encrypted backups cannot be modified by unauthorized users.

Monitoring and Alerts of Suspicious Activity

Azure Backup provides monitoring tools to track backup jobs and receive alerts for potential issues, such as failed backups.

Azure Backup Cost Considerations

Costs depend on the storage type (LRS, ZRS, GRS), amount of data backed up, and retention period. Choosing the right options can optimize cost efficiency.

Automatic Retry of Failed Backup Jobs

Azure Backup can automatically retry failed backup jobs a certain number of times before alerting you. This helps address temporary issues without requiring manual intervention.

Immutable Vault

The Immutable vault setting safeguards backup data, ensuring its integrity and preventing tampering. It prohibits actions that could result in the loss of recovery points, serving as a robust defense against inadvertent or deliberate deletions. By activating this feature, you effectively block malicious attempts to compromise your backups.

Initially, enabling immutability is reversible, allowing flexibility as needed. However, we advise locking the setting permanently to prevent any possibility of reversal. Once locked, even unauthorized users will be unable to disable immutability, ensuring continuous protection.

Conclusion

In summary, creating a strong backup plan with Azure Backup involves considering various factors like data protection, cost optimization, and adherence to best practices. Azure Backup offers essential components and features integrated into the Azure platform, making it seamless to use. Following Microsoft’s guidance on workload assessment, encryption, and ransomware protection enhances data security and resilience.

By understanding workload needs and recovery objectives, organizations can tailor their backup strategies effectively. Azure Backup provides flexibility to optimize storage costs and ensure data accessibility across regions. Embracing Azure Backup design patterns and best practices helps organizations safeguard their data and maintain business continuity in the face of challenges.

Tiago Dias Generoso is a Distinguished IT Architect | Senior SRE | Master Inventor based in Pocos de Caldas, Brazil. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent the employer’s positions, strategies or opinions.