We primarily use the solution as a backup.
With on-premises servers, you can have a long-term archival sitting on public clouds, like Azure. That is also one of the very good use cases where you're avoiding all the tape requirements for your long-term archival.
It's a native solution provided by Microsoft. It solves the needs we have. We are using it at most places, unless, and until there is some specific requirement where there's a database or something, which you're getting out of the box from Azure Backup. That's when we go for other third-party backup solutions. Otherwise, for the VM backups and all of that, it's a great product. It's one of the best solutions for backups.
It's easy to use.
The storage cost is not too much.
It gives you what you would like to have from a basic solution, like machine backup, or for your snapshots. Everything can be done from the platform itself.
The management interface is very intuitive and familiar. It makes it a lot easier for anyone to manage it or to actually work on it.
The integration with the record database and integration with other applications will be good, especially with the database piece. MySQL and Oracle are very widely used databases and Azure Backup doesn't have tight integration with them. It only provides the backup of the disc and the virtual machine and associated data, however, it doesn't provide you an application of their backup for non-Microsoft products, especially. That is where SQL Server, which is a Microsoft database, provides a good integration for the initial backup in MySQL which is a widely used database solution. They should actually provide that or you can handle integration with those databases as well.
The most important thing is integration with third-party products. That could be one of the best features. Whenever we have to look for databases or specific applications, that's when things get complicated and where third parties, like Win Backup, Symantec, and other backup solutions come in. The most important thing they can do to improve is to cover at least industry standard databases first.
I've been using the solution for seven or eight years now.
The backup stability is good.
Scalability is fine. For any mid-size org, it is a good solution. We have done it for close to 2,000 servers, so it is working fine.
In terms of tech support, I'm disappointed with support. It's not like earlier days. Earlier Microsoft tech support used to be one of the best. Now that's not the case. You have long queues and you have to wait a bit longer compared to earlier. What I can say is there are a lot of articles, and there are self-help resources. Those are available. That actually helps in troubleshooting. You do not always have to open a ticket unless and until there is something really critical. You just don't get a timely response.
Neutral
I have used AWS. Azure is a more mature product. AWS didn't used to have a backup solution.
It's easy to deploy.
We have a deployment team. There is usually very few people dealing with the implementation. You might have eight to ten guys doing the migration and other things. Recently, we did a project where there were close to 1,000 servers that have to be moved to the public cloud and we implemented Azure Backup for all of them. It didn't take much of our time since the management and the interface are very easy and you don't have much to do over there.
It's a slow process. You're not moving all of them at one shot. We'll do 15 to 20 servers in a batch, which we are doing based on the applications. One application, we are going to move at a given time. If there are 15 to 20 servers within one particular application, it takes hardly a few hours to go and do everything. However, if there are many, many applications, it will take time.
We handle the implementation for our clients.
The ROI is good based on the cost itself. The upfront cost itself is less and it includes your licensing and hosting and everything. There are no other industry-standard backups like it. The licensing costs are very high and you need it in front of all of that. It is hosted on the cloud. Even if you go with something which is hosted on the cloud, the license cost is high. If you compare it with other costs of solutions, Microsoft has done a good job of providing a native backup solution with very affordable pricing.
The cost for Azure backup is purely based on the size of the data and the virtual machine as well as the number of virtual machines. It's around $10 to $15 per month per virtual machine, along with something extra based on the size of the data. It covers 500 GBs or something like that. If you go beyond that for a virtual machine, you will have to pay extra.
We're Microsoft partners and we do have many customers who are using the Microsoft platform.
We are always using the latest version of the solution.
It's on-cloud and in some servers on-premises, which we are taking from the backup cloud. It's mostly for the infrastructure sitting on the cloud.
The solution should be an eight out of ten.
Potential users should actually look for compatibility. With any service that you talk about in a public cloud, one should first understand the requirement and then they should do some sort of research or they should, if they're new to it, have a look into the compatibility and the articles. Those are provided by Microsoft in terms of basic requirements or constraints that they have. They have a lot of constraints around. You have to be very careful which geography it is. What is the cost and what kinds of constraints do they have in terms of compatibility with any operating system or application? Those are the four or five things that one should look at before considering it as a solution or implementation.
