Azure Backup Review

When an outage or breach strikes, your company information must be available fast, or every area of the business suffers. But according to a study by Forrester Research and the Disaster Recovery Journal, the median length between an outage and recovery is actually rising — up from 3 hours in 2010 to 8 hours in 2013.

Cloud backup solutions like Azure Backup offer a unique solution to this problem. In this Azure backup review, we’ll uncover some truths and limitations of the service.

Understanding Azure Backup

The Azure Backup service backs up your digital assets on-premises and in the Microsoft cloud — whether on SharePoint, Exchange, SQL Server, Windows clients or Hyper-V virtual machines apps — ensuring the information remains secure and recoverable.

A single outage can bring your business to a standstill for an entire business day, resulting in lost opportunities, customer trust, revenue and much more. Azure cloud backup helps mitigate this scenario.

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But like any business solution, it’s important to understand the limitations and capabilities of Azure Backup before committing to it.

Azure Backup Advantages and Limitations

For companies using earlier versions of Windows and Windows Servers, Azure Backup is not an option. The service only backs up client versions of Windows from Windows 7 and beyond and Windows Server 2008 & newer. In terms of connectivity, relinquishing control of your data to a public cloud also might feel a bit unnerving.

Despite these limitations, Azure Backup is a cost-effective solution that enables better disaster recovery for your organization. Here are a few advantages of Azure Backup:

Reduce the IT workload while enabling users 

Azure Backup fortifies your data protection strategy without putting extra work on IT. With user self-service features, employees can take care of some restore tasks without the need for IT support.

Only pay for what you use

Azure only charges for compressed backups and by the GB each month, making it highly affordable and customizable to your business needs. With unlimited data transfers, you also don’t pay outbound or inbound data transfer during a restore operation from the Backup vault.

Save on physical infrastructure

Azure Backup replaces your existing on-premises or off-site backup solution, so you don’t have to front the capital expenditure for on-premises storage devices.

Guarantee high availability

The Azure Backup agent conducts three backups per day while the System Center DPM & Azure Backup Server back up twice per day — ensuring your information is highly available in the event of Azure site-level disaster.

Choose from flexible and efficient storage options

Azure Backup only backs up and stores new changes since the previous backup, saving on storage space and time. By compressing backups, Azure Backup also reduces your storage footprint.

Enjoy easy and granular data backups

With Azure Backup, you can back up encrypted, compressed and compressed/sparse files and folders. The Azure portal equips you to easily manage your backup infrastructure from one location and choose specific files or folders to recover. Azure also enables users to customize specific backup schedules and choose different levels of cloud protection for each machine — enabling further customization.

Investing in a backup solution is a fundamental piece of your disaster recovery plan. Your data must be quickly and easily retrievable to minimize the time between disaster and returning to business as usual. With flexible pricing, Azure Backup is a small price to pay to guarantee zero data loss during power outages or server failures.

Are you ready to secure your data in the Azure Cloud? Agile IT’s Azure backup and recovery services manage the backup and restore process for you, providing peace of mind during an outage or server failure. To learn more about our award-winning services and how Azure Backup can benefit your organization, connect with us today.