Sponsored by

Veeam
Veeam® is the leader in Backup solutions that
deliver Cloud Data Management™. Veeam
provides a single platform for modernizing
backup, accelerating hybrid cloud and securing
your data. With 365,000+ customers worldwide,
including 81% of the Fortune 500 and 66% of the
Global 2,000, Veeam customer-satisfaction
scores are the highest in the industry at 3.5x the
average. Veeam’s global ecosystem includes
70,000+ partners, including HPE, NetApp, Cisco
and Lenovo as exclusive resellers. Currently
headquartered in Baar, Switzerland, Veeam has
offices in more than 30 countries.

To learn more, visit

www.veeam.com

or follow Veeam on Twitter @veeam

 Sponsored by Veeam
Veeam® is the leader in Backup solutions that deliver
Cloud Data Management™. Veeam provides a single
platform for modernizing backup, accelerating hybrid
cloud and securing your data. With 365,000+ customers
worldwide, including 81% of the Fortune 500 and 66% of
the Global 2,000, Veeam customer-satisfaction scores are
the highest in the industry at 3.5x the average. Veeam’s
global ecosystem includes 70,000+ partners, including
HPE, NetApp, Cisco and Lenovo as exclusive resellers.
Currently headquartered in Baar, Switzerland, Veeam has
offices in more than 30 countries.

To learn more, visit www.veeam.com or follow Veeam on

Twitter @veeam
Conversational Azure Best Practices

Nick Cavalancia & Brien Posey

© 2020 Conversational Geek
Conversational Azure Backup Best Practices
Published by Conversational Geek® Inc.
www.conversationalgeek.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is
assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every
precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author
assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Nor is any liability assumed for
damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

Trademarks
Conversational Geek, the Conversational Geek logo and J. the Geek are trademarks of
Conversational Geek®. All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be
trademarks or service marks have been appropriately capitalized. We cannot attest to
the accuracy of this information. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as
affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.

Warning and Disclaimer

Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and as accurate as possible,
but no warranty or fitness is implied. The information provided is on an “as is” basis.
The author and the publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person
or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from the information contained in
this book or programs accompanying it.

Additional Information
For general information on our other products and services, or how to create a custom
Conversational Geek book for your business or organization, please visit our website at
ConversationalGeek.com

Publisher Acknowledgments
All of the folks responsible for the creation of this guide:
Authors: Nick Cavalancia
Brien Posey
Project Editor: Pete Roythorne
Copy Editor: Pete Roythorne
Content Reviewers: Sam Nichol
David Hill
Melissa Palmer
 Notes from the Authors

Organizations leveraging Microsoft Azure often focus on

the “using the cloud” part and forget completely about
the “Oops… I put my data in the cloud” part. While critical
workloads tend to get more focus than, say, your data in
Office 365, there is usually some question about how to
best protect everything you’ve put into Azure.

This book focuses on what’s truly important – getting

back to the basics of backup and using best practices to
ensure the backup and data protection strategies you
implement are truly effective.

We realize your use of Azure isn’t casual in nature; so the

content in this book seeks to help you crystalize your
backup concentration on the things that will keep those
critical workloads, applications, and data recoverable
should the situation arise.

Brien Posey Nick Cavalancia

 Backups: What Are We Really
Talking About Here?

The IT industry, perhaps even more so than any other industry,

seems to love using buzz words. Sadly, the backup industry is by
no means immune from this trend.

The problem with the way that buzzwords and technical jargon
get thrown around is that they can cause terms to become
ambiguous, or to lose their original meaning. Take the term
Disaster Recovery for example. In some circles, disaster recovery
is synonymous with backup and restoration. For others, disaster
recovery refers to having the ability to failover a workload to the
cloud in the event that an organization’s data center becomes
incapacitated.

In an effort to cut through the ambiguity, we want to say up

front that this book focuses squarely on backing up resources
that are being hosted in the Azure cloud. There might be brief
mentions of other clouds, assets that reside on-premises, or
some of the more exotic protective mechanisms, but backup and
restoration are really at the heart of this book. In fact, our goal is
to take a back-to-basics approach and have a very frank
discussion of backup best practices and shortcomings as they
relate to the Azure cloud.

Several years back, IBM poked fun at the IT

industry’s pervasive use of buzz words when
they made a commercial featuring a group of
conference attendees playing Buzzword Bingo
(https://youtu.be/ZIxcxfL5jas).

The One Buzzword that Matters

Even though we have tried to stay away from using meaningless
buzzwords as much as we can, there is one that we have to talk
about. That buzzword, or buzz phrase rather, is “location
agnostic”.

For years, public cloud providers were engaged in an all-out

marketing assault in an effort to get their customers to move
anything and everything to the cloud. The marketing message
was simple: “Cloud good, data center bad”. We even once heard
a speaker at a conference say that if by now you are not
operating 100% in the cloud, then you are a dinosaur.
Thankfully, cloud providers have backed off, at least somewhat,
and seem to have accepted the idea that their customers are
going to be operating hybrid environments. Some workloads are
best suited for the cloud, while others are probably a better fit
for on-premises data centers. This is where the phrase “location
agnostic” comes into play.

Location agnostic means that a workload could be running

practically anywhere. Its geographic location is becoming
increasingly irrelevant.

The reason why the concept of location agnostics is so important

is that it makes it possible to begin once again managing our
resources in a cohesive way. Back when everything existed on-
premises, there were universally accepted best practices
pertaining to how those resources should be managed and
protected.

However, as the public cloud started to gain mainstream

acceptance, people quickly realized that they had to adopt two
different ways of doing things. One set of best practices – and
tools – applied to resources that were running on-premises, and
an entirely different set applied to cloud resources. Now the
industry is starting to get back to the point where a common set
of best practices can be applied regardless of where an
organization’s IT resources physically reside.

The one big caveat to this, however, is that these best practices
aren’t necessarily the same as those that were previously used.
Remember, they were intended for an either/or situation. Either
a workload was running in the cloud, or it was running on-
premises.
10 Best Practices for Backing Up Resources
Residing in Microsoft Azure
Because the best practices for backup and restoration have
evolved significantly in recent years, we wanted to talk about
some of these, especially as they relate to protecting resources
that are stored in the Azure cloud.

1. Actually Back Up Your Data

This one might sound like a bit of a no-brainer, but it’s incredibly
important. You need to back up your data. Yes, seriously. This is
the number one best practice.

So why on Earth are we telling you to be sure to back up your

data? After all, the simple fact that you’re reading this book
means that you probably already know that backups are
important.

The reason why we’re including the need for data backups
among the other best practices is because it directly ties into a
couple of the things that we have already talked about. Namely,
the cloud providers marketing efforts, and the concept of
location agnostics. Let us explain.

If you were to ask most people what message the big cloud
provider’s marketing teams were trying to convey 10 years ago,
they would probably tell you that the message was that the
cloud makes everything cheaper and easier.

In conveying this message, the cloud providers would often

stress the idea that operating in the public cloud is far more
convenient than running workloads on-premises. This was due to
the fact that the cloud provider handles all of those maintenance
tasks that you, as an administrator, don’t want to be bothered
with.

Depending on the type of workload, these maintenance tasks

might include things like keeping the hardware running, planning
for the organization’s future capacity requirements, or installing
security updates.

The problem with this is somewhere along the line, people

started getting the perception that cloud providers handle all of
the maintenance for you. Since backups can be thought of as a
maintenance task, it probably seemed only natural to assume
that the cloud providers were handling backups on their
customer’s behalf. As it turned out though, they weren’t.

Most cloud providers, including Microsoft, don’t back up their

customer’s data on their behalf. Microsoft uses a shared
responsibility model. This model essentially states that Microsoft
is responsible for ensuring the wellbeing of the Azure
infrastructure, but customers are responsible for protecting their
own data.

The bottom line is that the need for backups doesn’t go away
just because a resource resides in the cloud. Data loss can, and
certainly still does happen in cloud environments.

This all ties back to the concept of location agnostics. Your data
needs to be backed up, regardless of where that data resides.

2. Use the Right Tool for the Job

A second best practice is to make sure that you are using the
right tool for the job. Your backup software needs to be aligned
with your backup requirements.

We will be the first to admit that this seems like yet another odd
thing to include in a list of best practices. At best, it seems a little
bit over simplistic. At worst, it sounds like a pitch designed to sell
backup software. In reality though, there are three very
important reasons why we are including the concept of using the
right tool for the job among our list of best practices for backing
up resources in Azure.
The first reason why it is so important to use the right tool for
the job is that backup software that was designed for on-
premises use might not do such a good job backing up resources
in the cloud. That isn’t to say that a legacy backup product can’t
back up resources in Azure. We have seen it done. What we are
saying though is that trying to repurpose an on-premises backup
product for use in the cloud can be problematic. In some cases,
the software may work, but fail to provide an optimal
experience. In other situations, the software might partially
work, but leave you with gaps in your coverage.

It’s important to be completely confident

that your backup solution is going to work
when needed. There is no worse feeling
than thinking that your backup solution was
doing its job, only to discover during a crisis
that your data wasn’t actually being backed
up properly.

A second reason why it is so important to use the right tool for

the job is that a lot of the legacy backup products require the
use of agents. As IT pros, we all know that agents can be a pain.
They can be difficult to deploy and manage, and sometimes they
seem to stop working for no reason. We have even seen
situations in which someone re-imaged a computer and forgot to
reinstall the backup agent when they were done, leaving that
machine unprotected.

Even if you put all of these potential annoyances aside, there is a

more important reason for staying away from the use of an
agent-based approach. Backup agents are often designed to
communicate across an obscure TCP or UDP port. That might not
be a problem if you are using that agent exclusively on-premises,
but there is a good chance that the agent’s port requirements
may keep it from functioning across cloud boundaries.

Finally, reason number three has to do with support. As a

general rule, software vendors support their software only when
it is used in accordance with their recommendations. If a backup
vendor designed a particular piece of software to be used on-
premises, then they probably don’t support using that software
to protect Azure resources, even if the software seems to work
with Azure.

As a matter of self-preservation, you never want to put yourself

in a situation where you might one day end up having to explain
to your boss that you can’t recover the organization’s data
because you were using backup software in an unsupported
manner.

Using backup software that was designed for

on-premises use to protect Azure resources
may in fact be a violation of the software’s
licensing agreement.

The lesson here is to use a backup product that avoids the use of
agents, and that is specifically designed for use with Azure.

3. Use Automation to Work Smarter, Not Harder

The third best practice for protecting your resources within the
Azure cloud is to use backup automation whenever you can.

Earlier, we brought up the idea that one of the things that

initially made public clouds like Azure so appealing was that the
cloud providers handle many of the maintenance tasks that IT
pros would have otherwise had to do themselves. While it is true
that there are still some maintenance tasks that are left to the IT
professional, it is possible to narrow the gap by leveraging
automation.

Automation is actually a really good fit for backup related tasks.

In fact, it’s one of those things that has been used in one way or
another for what seems like forever. Consider for example, that
the backup software used in the 90s was capable of running a
backup job at a scheduled time. This was a form of automation.

But job scheduling isn’t the only way that automation can be
used to assist with the backup process. Modern cloud backup
applications make it possible to automate things like VM
snapshot creation, and backup lifecycle management that is
based around the organizations retention policies.

Admittedly, it is tempting to think of backup automation as a

convenience feature. Some may consider it to be one of those
things that is nice to have, but not necessarily essential.
However, backup automation can help to improve backup
reliability by making sure that backups are created and
maintained in a predictable – and compliant – way.

Automation also helps IT pros to be more effective than might

otherwise be possible. We all know that this age of ever-
shrinking IT budgets has resulted in staffing resources being
stretched thin. Automating mundane tasks such as those related
to data protection helps to decrease the administrative
workload, thereby giving IT professionals a bit more free time
that they can use to work on other things.

4. Be Aware of Cloud Costs

Early on, public cloud providers relentlessly marketed

themselves as being the cheap alternative to running business
workloads on-premises. Over time though, many of us have
learned the hard lesson that operating in the cloud can be just as
expensive (if not more so) as keeping workloads running in-
house. This isn’t to say that you can’t save money by hosting a
workload in the cloud. Under the right circumstances, migrating
a workload to Microsoft Azure can yield a significant cost saving.

The key to realizing actual cost savings by running a workload in

the cloud is to understand that cloud providers such as
Microsoft, Amazon, and others are not running a charity. Like
any other business, their goal is to make money. Not surprisingly,
it can be quite expensive to host a workload in the cloud.

If you want to avoid being surprised by the costs you’ll incur,

then you will need to spend a little bit of time learning how
Microsoft bills its Azure customers.

A deep dive into Azure billing is well beyond the scope of this
book, but we do want to take a moment and talk about data
egress fees. These fees can have an enormous impact on the
cost of your Azure backups.

Simply put, data egress fees are charges for data that leaves the
cloud. These fees are not unique to Microsoft. Although the data
egress fee amounts vary from one cloud provider to the next,
most cloud providers do charge their customers a fee any time
that data leaves their cloud. Presumably these fees were put into
place as a way of discouraging customers from moving their
cloud workloads to another provider, or moving those workloads
back on-premises. Regardless of intent though, data egress fees
can come into play when an organization creates or restores a
backup.

Designing your environment with backups as a consideration can

help avoid data egress fees. Utilizing of direct connect networks,
keeping data within a region, etc. – in essence, staying within
one cloud provider will lower the risk of incurring egress fees.

In case you’re wondering, data egress fees vary widely based on

the provider and on the volume of outbound data. As of the time
that this book was written, Microsoft allows up to 5 GB of
outbound data per month before any Azure data egress fees kick
in. Once the 5 GB threshold is exceeded, the price for outbound
data is $0.087 per gigabyte for the first 10 TB of data each
month (Microsoft offers a discount for transfers larger than 10
TB). The pricing structure is documented at:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/bandwidth/

Admittedly, $0.087 per gigabyte doesn’t sound like all that much
money, but let’s do some math. Suppose for a moment that you
needed to restore 1 TB of data from Azure to an on premises
VM. One terabyte is equal to 1024 gigabytes. Just to make things
fair, let’s assume that five gigabytes of data are going to be
restored for free. This means that you would be billed for
transferring 1019 GB of data. At $0.087 per gigabyte, that works
out to $88.65.

While an $88.65 charge probably isn’t going to deplete your

entire IT budget, remember that this figure is based on restoring
a single terabyte of data. A large-scale data restoration operation
can cost considerably more. Never mind the fact that there may
be other charges related to the operation, such as fees related
to storage IOPS.

As you plan for backing up your Azure data, it is important to

either budget for data egress fees, or to structure your backups
in a way that avoids these fees. Many organizations come up
with several possible backup architectures, and then assess the
cost of each one based on Microsoft’s published billing rates.

5. Use Storage Tiers Effectively

There are costs tied to the use of Azure storage. If you are going
to be storing your backup data in the Azure cloud, then it is
important to factor those costs into your backup strategy.

Aside from the previously discussed data egress fees, there are
two main costs that you need to be aware of. First, there are
capacity related costs. When you store data in the Azure cloud,
you aren’t purchasing storage, you’re renting it. As such,
Microsoft charges a fee each month for every gigabyte of
storage that is in use. Suppose for example, that you were to
write a 100 GB file to the Azure cloud. You would be charged for
100 GB of storage each month, for as long as the file remains in
the cloud.

The other type of charge to be aware of is a usage charge.

Microsoft bills its customers for storage IOPS related to reading
or writing data. Hence, the more frequently a piece of data is
accessed, the higher the cost of keeping that data in the Azure
cloud.

One thing to keep in mind is that Microsoft Azure storage is not

one size fits all. There are actually several different types of
Azure storage. Azure block blob storage, for example, is classified
into tiers that include the Premium Performance tier, Hot tier,
Cool tier, and Archive tier. Each of these tiers has its own unique
performance characteristics, and its own pricing structure. The
general rule is the “colder” the storage, the lower the cost/GB
and the slower the restore time. Even so, it’s much less
expensive than maintaining on-premises storage arrays. The best
way to keep your cloud storage costs in check is to make
effective use of the various storage tiers, balancing cost and
performance.

6. Isolate Your Backup Data

One of the most important things that you should do with regard
to your Azure backups is to keep your backup data completely
isolated from everything else. This is the only way to guarantee
the integrity of your backups.

Early on, ransomware infections tended to target the Windows

library folders (Documents, Pictures, etc.) for encryption. Over
time though, ransomware evolved into something much more
damaging. Modern ransomware variants still encrypt the
Windows libraries, but they usually also encrypt the data found
on network shares. There are even a few types of ransomware
that are specifically designed to attack backups.
The one saving grace is that ransomware cannot encrypt data
that it cannot access. That’s great news if an end user happens
to trigger a ransomware attack. However, if an administrator
were to accidentally trigger a ransomware attack then the
damage could be massive. After all, the ransomware will have
access to everything that the administrator has access to.

That’s why it is so incredibly important to keep your backups

isolated. Backups often represent the only viable tool for
recovering from a ransomware attack, short of paying the
ransom. If the backup were to become a casualty of the attack,
then the organization may be left with no choice but to pay the
ransom.

There are no guarantees that you will be able to

recover from a ransomware attack by paying the
ransom. There have been many stories of people
who have paid a ransom but were not able to
decrypt their data. There are also stories of
secondary attacks occurring days or even hours
after a ransom is paid. The attacker knows that
the victim has already paid the ransom once,
and therefore encrypts their data a second time
in an effort to extort additional money.

The trick to keeping your backups safe is to make sure that the
backup data is not accessible from any of your standard user
accounts. Instead, create purpose-built accounts that are used
only for backup and restoration tasks. These should be the only
accounts that have access to the data.

7. Utilize Multifactor Authentication

While we are on the subject of keeping your backups secure, be

sure to take advantage of multifactor authentication. Even if you
don’t want to require multifactor authentication on an
organization-wide basis, you should enable it for any accounts
that have access to your backup data. This will keep an attacker
from being able to gain access to your backup data by
performing a brute force attack against an account that has
access to the data.

8. Use a Single Backup Solution

Throughout this book, we have stressed the concept of location

agnostics. Location agnostics is extremely important when it
comes to backup applications. If a backup application is truly
location agnostic, then it will be able to back up your data
regardless of where it physically resides. There are massive
benefits to having a location agnostic solution.

The most obvious of these benefits are that using a single

solution to back up all of your data, regardless of its location,
reduces costs and complexity. It’s always going to be less
expensive to manage a single solution than to juggle an entire
collection of disparate backup applications.

What is more important however, is that having a backup

application that is truly location agnostic gives you the flexibility
to run business workloads in the location that makes the most
sense. You might for example, have some workloads running on-
premises in a VMware environment, other workloads running in
a Nutanix environment at a secondary datacenter, and still other
workloads running in Azure or another public cloud. Having a
single cohesive backup solution that can work both on-premises
and in the cloud, regardless of geographic location, hypervisor or
cloud means that you can run your workloads where it makes
the most sense to do so, without having to worry about how you
are going to back them up.

Another way that such a solution helps organizations to be

flexible is because it also greatly simplifies workload portability.
You can restore or move on-premises workloads to the cloud or
bring cloud workloads back on-premises. Having this ability gives
you a degree of future proofing, because you are no longer
locked into using a specific cloud or platform. You can agile and
flexible enough to move workloads as your business needs
dictate.

9. Avoid Complexity Wherever You Can

The entire concept of data backups is really straightforward. You

are creating a duplicate copy of a protected resource so that you
have a way of getting your data back following some sort of
catastrophe.

It really doesn’t get much simpler than that. Even so, there are
some extraordinarily complex backup solutions on the market
today. While such solutions presumably work, it is usually better
to go with a less complicated solution.

One reason for this is that a simple backup solution can be

implemented far more quickly than a complex backup that
requires extensive architectural planning. The reason why this
matters is that the simple solution allows you to begin protecting
your data right away, while a more complex solution may leave
your data unprotected for a period of time during the
implementation process.

A second reason why it is better to go with a simpler backup

solution if at all possible is that excessive complexity is often the
root cause of administrative mistakes. When it comes to
something as important as your backup, you really don’t want to
be making configuration errors. The simpler a backup product is,
the less chance there is that you will make a mistake when
setting it up or using it.

10. Having the Ability to Restore Matters

Obviously, the entire point of backing up your data is so that you

can get that data back if something bad should happen. Not
every data loss event is the same. Your backup solution needs to
be able to restore data in a way that aligns with the problem that
you are trying to recover from. Imagine for instance that a user
accidentally deletes a file from a file server. You shouldn’t have
to restore the entire file server just to get that one file back.

Make sure that your backup solution has granular restoration

capabilities so that you can restore the minimum amount of data
required to recover from the situation at hand. Ideally, you
should be able to perform a restore job targeted at the following
levels:

• Host Server (if operating on premises)

• Virtual Machine

• Application

• Infrastructure Component (such as the Active Directory)

• File

While the idea that there are different types of restorations may
seem really obvious, some of the backup and data recovery tools
that are available today force you into performing one specific
type of recovery. Unless you have a backup solution in place that
offers granular restoration capabilities, you may end up having
to restore an entire system just to recover a file or an
application.
The Big Takeaways
With a market share estimated at just under 18%, and revenues
of over $5 billion (plus the fact that you’ve read this book), it’s
probably safe to say that your organization has some portion of
its’ operations in Azure and needs to protect it with backups.

The use of Azure, while likely maintaining some form of on-

premises environment, can look like it will complicate the issue
of backups. But, by getting back to the basics and looking past
the buzzword-worthy data protection hype, there are some very
concrete and, in some cases, rudimentary backup truths that can
serve as useful best practices.

By putting the 10 backup best practices we’ve outlined into use,

you’ll be able to develop an effectual, cost-effective, and secure
means of protecting your Azure investment.
 Vendor Sponsor Chapter –
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure

Organizations dependent on Microsoft Azure for their

operational needs must take steps to protect the data,
applications, and virtual systems hosted there. But, doing this
should align with all of the best practices outlined in this book
to achieve expected levels of efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and
productivity you’ve come to expect from your on-premises
backups.

So, the solution used needs to be designed with the cloud

specifically in mind so that it can take advantage of all that
Microsoft Azure has to offer. It also must simultaneously
augment features in innovative ways to ensure the highest
levels of data protection of everything important you maintain
in Azure. You’ve no doubt seen the following grid outlining the
shared responsibility model every cloud provider promotes
today.

Source: Microsoft

Microsoft Azure fits the model in the SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS

categories, depending on the service being used. But when
thinking about this from a data protection perspective,
regardless of the service Azure provides, the “information and
data” are always your responsibility.

This is where Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure comes into

play.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure

This Azure-native solution provides organizations with the
ability to use Azure VM snapshots for frequent recovery points
and reliable recovery of everything from a single file to an
entire VM.

Veeam supports the backups of over 365,000

customers globally today.

This product touts some impressive Azure-centric features to

deliver fast recovery, no matter the data loss.

Azure-Native

It makes sense that since your organization is operating in the

cloud, your backups of that environment should equally be
both hosted and designed for the cloud.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure meets this need by offering:

• Rapid cloud-based deployment – Veeam Backup for

Microsoft Azure can be subscribed to and launched
directly from within the Azure Marketplace. Data
protection of your Azure VMs, applications, and data
can begin in, literally, minutes.

• Agentless – We start with native Azure VM snapshots

to allow for fast and frequent restore points and even
faster recoveries. These snapshots can also be tiered
off to Azure Blob for longer-term retention.

• Automated efficiency – Azure VM snapshot, backup

and retention policies can be automatically configured
and managed to ensure more reliable backups.
 • Fast and flexible recovery – Sometimes you need an
entire VM and sometimes you just need certain files.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure offers flexible full-
and file-level restore options, allowing the organization
to get back to work quickly.

Cost-Effective
Storage in any cloud – even Azure – can get expensive if your
use isn’t managed. Microsoft Azure offers a number of storage
tiers, each with lowered cost/GB tied with reduced response
times and recovery speed. But, because some backups are
needed for long-term retention while others are needed for
instant recovery, cost-effective backups are only achieved
when you can efficiently manage your storage use.

To assist, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure offers:

• Optimized cloud costs – Azure costs can be controlled

while still optimizing your data protection with an
industry-first built-in backup cost estimation tool. This
helps avoid unexpected costs before they’re incurred
and ultimately lowers your bill.

• Low-cost retention - Azure VM snapshots can be easily

backed up to Azure Blob object storage for lower cost,
longer term retention.

Secure

Backup data is still at risk of data theft, deletion, and

ransomware encryption, so it’s imperative that your backups in
Azure are still secure.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure ensures your backups are

secure with the following features:
 • Isolated backups – Isolate and secure backup data
from production with support for cross-subscription
and cross-region configurations.

• Layered defense – Protect backup data from security

breaches and cyberattacks with support for multifactor
authentication.

Hybrid-Ready

• Two-step portability – The recovery or migration of any

on-premises or private cloud workload into Azure is a
simple two-step process with Veeam Backup &
Replication, which can then continue to be protected
through Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure

• Instant recovery anywhere – Veeam Backup for

Microsoft Azure gives you the flexibility to restore
Azure VMs just about anywhere you desire; in-place,
cross-region, or cross-subscription within Azure; as an
on-prem VM within your data center; or into another
cloud provider.

Protect Your Investment in Azure with Veeam

Organizations today face the need to ensure their operations in
Azure remain available and secure. Having an ability to quickly,
flexibly, and cost-efficiently backup and recover Azure VMs and
their data is an absolute necessity.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure takes the native snapshot

toolset offered by Microsoft and layers automation and
multiple backup options to ensure data is reliably protected.
Added intelligence like cost management and recovery
flexibility enables organizations to achieve the highest levels of
recoverability at the lowest total cost of ownership.
Veeam Backup
for Microsoft Azure
Native Azure backup and recovery to overcome
ANY cloud data loss in minutes
Azure-native

Cost-effective

Secure

Hybrid-ready

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