Azure Backup is a scalable backup solution with zero capital investment and minimal operational expenses that can help a company achieve maximal data protection. Azure Backup’s System Center Data Protection Manager provides optional integrations that can enable you to protect both advanced workloads running in your datacenter in VMs as well as those that are on physical servers.
The pricing for Azure Backup is considered to be in the middle range, neither the most expensive nor the cheapest. The licensing costs are based on consumption, meaning that the more storage used and data protected, the higher the cost. There is a cost per terabyte for using this solution. The pricing model is pay-as-you-go, with charges only for the storage space used.
The return on investment for Azure Backup is highly dependent on the modernization of your solutions. Upgrading to the cloud can result in significant savings. However, if you choose to do a lift and shift without migrating to the cloud, the cost can be detrimental. The upfront cost of Azure Backup is relatively low and includes licensing and hosting. It stands out among other industry-standard backup solutions. Microsoft has successfully provided a native backup solution with affordable pricing when compared to other solutions hosted on the cloud.
The primary use case of Azure Backup is to back up and restore data, specifically for virtual machines and SQL databases. It is used for data protection, including VMs and storage pools, and can be used for long-term archival on public clouds.
The product is also utilized for backing up application servers and ensuring data recovery in the event of disruptions.
Azure Backup is used as a backup solution for the Azure environment and for protecting critical controls against cyber attacks.
The most valuable features of Azure Backup are its ability to store anything Azure-related, file recovery and file vault capabilities, seamless integration with Azure, immediate recovery and restoration, broad data protection across the entire Azure landing zone, native backup capabilities, ease of use, good integration with other Azure services, and compatibility with other solutions.
The solution offers a non-intrusive backup, stable performance, scalability, detailed security settings, retention policies, notifications, and multiple layers of security. Additionally, users appreciate that Azure Backup is a native solution provided by Microsoft and is included in the overall price of the Azure cloud service.
Some areas for improvement on Azure Backup include faster recovery time, the need for better solutions for specific scenarios without relying on third-party applications, the addition of ransomware protection, tweaking the extensibility onto hybrid environments, improving backup data copies to make them immutable, and simplifying the file-level restore procedure.
Users also advocate for increasing the frequency of backups, offering better pricing options, enhancing the restoration of permissions, improving integration with non-Microsoft databases, providing more customization and fine-tuning in reporting and governance, adding more automation, integration, and security features, reducing the time it takes to restore virtual machines, including shared managed discs in the backup scope, and improving technical support response times.
The initial setup for Azure Backup varied in terms of complexity and time required. Some users found it easy and straightforward, rating it highly in terms of ease. Others mentioned that the deployment time depended on factors such as company size and data retention requirements. While some users completed the setup in a couple of hours or a few minutes, others mentioned that it could take a few days or even a month for total deployment.
Azure Backup is highly scalable and can easily be expanded to meet the needs of different organizations. It is cloud-based and there are no limitations on storage space. Users can configure as many backups as they like without any restrictions. However, the scalability may vary depending on the location, with newer regions potentially having slower implementation.
Some customers have praised the support, mentioning that it is good, helpful, and very proactive. They appreciate the availability of self-help resources and the assistance provided by the technical support team. However, there are also a few customers who have expressed dissatisfaction with the support. They mention that the level-one support is not great and that it takes a long time to resolve support tickets.
Users have noted that the solution is reliable and has few outages. Compared to traditional on-premise private cloud environments, Azure Backup is considered much more dependable. Users appreciate that there is no single point of failure in Azure Backup, unlike other solutions like Avamar that rely on a separate server.
The pricing for Azure Backup is considered to be in the middle range, neither the most expensive nor the cheapest. The licensing costs are based on consumption, meaning that the more storage used and data protected, the higher the cost. There is a cost per terabyte for using this solution. The pricing model is pay-as-you-go, with charges only for the storage space used.
The return on investment for Azure Backup is highly dependent on the modernization of your solutions. Upgrading to the cloud can result in significant savings. However, if you choose to do a lift and shift without migrating to the cloud, the cost can be detrimental. The upfront cost of Azure Backup is relatively low and includes licensing and hosting. It stands out among other industry-standard backup solutions. Microsoft has successfully provided a native backup solution with affordable pricing when compared to other solutions hosted on the cloud.
The primary use case of Azure Backup is to back up and restore data, specifically for virtual machines and SQL databases. It is used for data protection, including VMs and storage pools, and can be used for long-term archival on public clouds.
The product is also utilized for backing up application servers and ensuring data recovery in the event of disruptions.
Azure Backup is used as a backup solution for the Azure environment and for protecting critical controls against cyber attacks.
The most valuable features of Azure Backup are its ability to store anything Azure-related, file recovery and file vault capabilities, seamless integration with Azure, immediate recovery and restoration, broad data protection across the entire Azure landing zone, native backup capabilities, ease of use, good integration with other Azure services, and compatibility with other solutions.
The solution offers a non-intrusive backup, stable performance, scalability, detailed security settings, retention policies, notifications, and multiple layers of security. Additionally, users appreciate that Azure Backup is a native solution provided by Microsoft and is included in the overall price of the Azure cloud service.
Some areas for improvement on Azure Backup include faster recovery time, the need for better solutions for specific scenarios without relying on third-party applications, the addition of ransomware protection, tweaking the extensibility onto hybrid environments, improving backup data copies to make them immutable, and simplifying the file-level restore procedure.
Users also advocate for increasing the frequency of backups, offering better pricing options, enhancing the restoration of permissions, improving integration with non-Microsoft databases, providing more customization and fine-tuning in reporting and governance, adding more automation, integration, and security features, reducing the time it takes to restore virtual machines, including shared managed discs in the backup scope, and improving technical support response times.
The initial setup for Azure Backup varied in terms of complexity and time required. Some users found it easy and straightforward, rating it highly in terms of ease. Others mentioned that the deployment time depended on factors such as company size and data retention requirements. While some users completed the setup in a couple of hours or a few minutes, others mentioned that it could take a few days or even a month for total deployment.
Azure Backup is highly scalable and can easily be expanded to meet the needs of different organizations. It is cloud-based and there are no limitations on storage space. Users can configure as many backups as they like without any restrictions. However, the scalability may vary depending on the location, with newer regions potentially having slower implementation.
Some customers have praised the support, mentioning that it is good, helpful, and very proactive. They appreciate the availability of self-help resources and the assistance provided by the technical support team. However, there are also a few customers who have expressed dissatisfaction with the support. They mention that the level-one support is not great and that it takes a long time to resolve support tickets.
Users have noted that the solution is reliable and has few outages. Compared to traditional on-premise private cloud environments, Azure Backup is considered much more dependable. Users appreciate that there is no single point of failure in Azure Backup, unlike other solutions like Avamar that rely on a separate server.
Azure Backup has many features that make it a most effective product. Included among these is its ability to easily scale up your storage capacity. It taps into the cloud to give you the ability to expand on a massive scale. This can be done without any monitoring or maintenance overhead.
Benefits of Azure Backup
Some of the benefits of using Azure Backup include:
Reviews from Real Users
There are a number of characteristics that make Azure Backup extremely effective. Two of these are the flexibility that it offers users and its overall effectiveness.
PeerSpot user Ayman Y., an IT manager at NOMAC, notes all of the different backup options that Azure Backup offers. He writes, “It has many features. First of all, you can schedule a backup for the client as you like. You can do a backup from the whole virtual machine as an image. You can do a backup only from files and folders. It has every option. All options are available for the backup, for the restore, for the bandwidth utilization to do backups, even virtual machines or a physical machine. If you need to do a backup of the whole image from the virtual machine, all these options are there.”
PeerSpot user Muzammil M., a senior operations engineer at the AlGosaibi Group, notes the effectiveness of Azure Backup when he writes, “Azure Backup is good because it is entirelycloud-based, which means that you can be 99.9% sure that your backup is safe. This is the reason that I suggest its use for companies that need to back up critical data.”
Azure Backup is the #8 ranked solution in best Backup and Recovery Software. PeerSpot users give Azure Backup an average rating of 8.0 out of 10. Azure Backup is most commonly compared to Veeam Backup & Replication: Azure Backup vs Veeam Backup & Replication. Azure Backup is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 56% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a computer software company, accounting for 17% of all views.Russell Reynolds Associates, Somerset County Council, Kardem, PCL Construction