Azure Backup

As more and more companies are looking into expanding their backup and restore service into the cloud I want to give you a short FAQ with some pros and cons regarding the Azure Backup service.

• What are the requirements to start using Azure Backup with DPM?

For the current release of Azure Backup it requires that you install the Update Roll up 2 for DPM 2012 SP1 before installing the Azure Backup Agent.

• Is there any storage limits within Azure Backup?

No. There is no limit to the amount of data you can back up to an Azure Backup vault. However the size of the data source (VM, volume, SQL database) that you want to back up to a vault cannot exceed 1.65TB.

• What is the maximum retention time?

The maximum retention time is 3360 days. 

(Requires DPM 2012 R2 & Update Rollup 3)

• Which workloads are supported?

At the time of this post there is some workloads limitations.

Supported OS:

§  Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

§  Windows Server 2012

§  Windows Server 2012 R2

Supported workloads:

§  Virtual machines (VMs)

§  Volumes

§  Files and Folders

Unsupported workloads:

§  Active Directory/System State

§  Exchange

§  SharePoint
§  SQL

Pros

• All backed up data are encrypted.
• Data compression around 25% (Depending on size and data type).
• Support for Windows 2012 servers that uses deduplication.
• Off-site storage
• Encrypted, compressed and sparse files and folders supported.

Cons

• 10-15% storage allocation of the total backed up data for the cache folder.
• Only primary DPM-server can be configured with online backups.
• Some workloads not yet supported.