Azure Backup Calculator: Estimate Your Monthly Backup Costs

Every admin has heard data restore horror stories or experienced one firsthand. Restores are rare, so glitches in the data backup process aren’t always apparent until something goes horribly wrong.

What Is Azure Backup?

Azure Backup is a scalable data protection solution for your on-premises and cloud-hosted data that encrypts data at rest and in transit.

With 99.9% availability for its backup and restore functionality, you don’t have to worry whether your data will successfully back up or restore when you need it most.

With no capital investment required and minimal operating expense, Azure Backup is also a financially attractive option for many dynamic businesses.

Get help designing and implementing an effective Azure Backup solution today. Our approach includes in-depth Azure Migration Assessment to ensure your backup strategy is integrated with your overall cloud migration plan.

Its flexible pricing ensures you only pay for the data you use. Here are the main costs you’ll incur:

• Software management

  The number of machines you’re backing up will determine your software management cost. This cost is measured and reported in the monthly Azure bill as Protected Instances_._ The management fee also depends on the size of the machine being protected. Instances up to 50GB of data cost $5 per protected instance. Instances between 50GB to 500GB of data are $10 per protected instance, and instances greater than 500 GB are priced as increments of $10 per 500GB. Storage is also an additional cost.

• Backup storage

  Storage figures are based on the amount of backup data stored in Azure. Microsoft bills all backup storage at Block Blob storage rates. The amount of data stored depends on some key factors:

  • The size of the primary data source
  • The frequency of the backup jobs
  • How long the backup data remains in Azure
  • The amount of new data each backup generates
  • The amount of compression applied to the data

Learn more about 2017 Azure pricing updates here.

Does Azure Backup Make Financial Sense for Your Business?

Beyond the scalable pricing model, Azure Backup offers a few more cost benefits:

• There are no upfront costs or termination fees
• You only pay for the data you use
• You don’t pay for restores, outbound bandwidth or storage transactions

Despite the financial appeal, you might have a few lingering questions: What will this fee structure will look like in your environment? How do you calculate the number of instances you have? How do you estimate the storage your backups will consume?

To help answer those questions and others for your unique business, Microsoft created the Azure Backup Calculator. 

This dynamic spreadsheet helps you estimate your Azure Backup bill. To calculate the number of protected instances, you simply need to know the size of the Windows Server or Virtual Machine.

For DPM servers and data sources, there’s a script available on the DPM server to estimate the Protected Instances and backup storage you’ll need. You can download the script here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/azure-backup-pricing.

While your answers may not be exact, using the Azure Backup Calculator to estimate storage costs will provide a rough idea and allow you to better weigh your backup options.

Still have questions regarding Azure Backup? Ready to take the first step in securing your critical company data? Contact an Agile IT consultant today, and we’d be happy to answer your questions or learn more about your project needs.