What is Azure Backup?

Azure Backup is a simple and cost-effective backup-as-a-service solution that extends tried-and-trusted tools on-premises with rich and powerful tools in the cloud. It delivers protection for customers’ data no matter where it resides: in the enterprise data center, in remote and branch offices, or in the public cloud; while being sensitive to the unique requirements these scenarios pose. Azure Backup, now in a seamless portal experience with Azure Site Recovery, offers minimal maintenance and cost-efficiency, consistent tools for offsite backups and operational recovery, and unified application availability and data protection.

Your data and applications are everywhere—on servers, clients, and in the cloud. Backup can protect your critical applications, including SharePoint, Exchange, and SQL Server; files and folders; Windows servers and clients; and Azure infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) virtual machines.

Due to business or compliance requirements, organizations are required to protect their data for years, and over time this data grows exponentially. Traditionally, tape has been used for long-term retention. Backup provides a compelling alternative to tape with significant cost savings, shorter recovery times, and up to 99 years of retention.

Your backup data is secure over the wire and at rest. The backup data is stored in geo-replicated storage which maintains 6 copies of your data across two Azure datacenters. With 99.9% service availability, Backup provides operational peace of mind.

Backup is efficient over the network and on your disk. Once the initial seeding is complete, only incremental changes are sent at a defined frequency. Built-in features, such as compression, encryption, longer retention, and bandwidth throttling, help boost IT efficiency.