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3.1.4.1. Create and Configure a Recovery Services Vault

šŸ’” First Principle: A Recovery Services vault is the fundamental Azure resource for centralizing backup and disaster recovery management, providing a secure, scalable, and policy-driven control plane for protecting diverse workloads.

Scenario: Your organization needs a centralized solution to manage backups for all its Azure Virtual Machines, SQL Databases, and Azure File Shares. This solution must be scalable and protect backups from accidental deletion, with data replicated to a secondary region for disaster recovery.

What It Is: A Recovery Services vault is a logical container that stores the backup data for various Azure and on-premises workloads.

How to create a Recovery Services vault:

  1. In the Azure Portal, search for "Recovery Services vaults" and select "Create."

  2. Specify:

    • Subscription: Choose the billing context.
    • Resource Group: Select or create for logical organization.
    • Vault Name: Enter a unique identifier.
    • Region: Pick the closest Azure Region for compliance and performance.

  3. Storage Replication Type: This choice is permanent for the vault and dictates its disaster recovery capabilities.

    • LRS (Locally Redundant Storage): Replicates data within a single datacenter; cost-effective, but less resilient to datacenter-level outages.
    • GRS (Geo-Redundant Storage): Replicates data to a secondary Region hundreds of miles away; higher durability and disaster protection.
Key Considerations:
  • Security: Enable soft delete to protect backups from accidental or malicious deletion. Consider immutability to prevent changes to backup data for a set period.
  • Monitoring: Integrate with Azure Monitor for backup health, alerts, and job status.

āš ļø Common Pitfall: Choosing LRS replication for a vault that protects critical production workloads. This provides no protection against a regional disaster.

Key Trade-Offs:
  • Durability (GRS) vs. Cost (LRS): GRS provides disaster recovery capability but is more expensive than LRS. The choice depends on the criticality of the data being protected.

Reflection Question: How does creating and configuring a Recovery Services vault, particularly by choosing the appropriate storage replication type (e.g., GRS), fundamentally enable centralized backup management and ensure data durability for diverse workloads?