3.1.4. Implement Azure Backup and Recovery

💡 First Principle: Implementing a robust backup and recovery strategy is fundamental to safeguarding critical data and applications from loss or disruption, ensuring business continuity and data recoverability through automated, policy-driven protection.

Scenario: You need to protect all your Azure Virtual Machines and Azure File Shares from accidental deletion or data corruption. You also need to define how long backups are retained and ensure you can restore entire VMs or individual files when needed.

This task delves into the practical application of Azure's data protection services. You'll explore how to:

• Create and Configure a Recovery Services Vault: Establish a centralized management point for your backups.
• Configure Azure Backup for VMs: Implement policy-driven backups for your Azure Virtual Machines.
• Configure Azure Backup for Azure Files: Protect your cloud-based file shares.
• Perform a Restore Operation: Understand the process of recovering data to meet specific Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) needs.

Mastering these concepts is crucial for the AZ-104 exam, as it assesses your ability to implement robust data protection and disaster recovery solutions.

⚠️ Common Pitfall: Having a backup strategy but never testing the restore process. An untested backup is not a reliable recovery plan.

Key Trade-Offs:

• Recovery Point Objective (RPO) vs. Cost/Performance: More frequent backups (lower RPO) provide better data protection but can increase storage costs and potentially impact the performance of the source system during the backup window.

Reflection Question: How do Azure Backup and Recovery Services Vaults collectively ensure data durability and business continuity by providing automated, policy-driven backups and streamlined restore operations?