Azure Backup
Azure Backup is one of the services that enables the protection and recovery management functionality in OMS. It is a service based in Azure that enables you to protect and restore your data from the Microsoft cloud, and includes support for the protection and recovery of files, folders, application workloads, and Azure virtual machines. Azure Backup provides various components to meet your protection and recovery needs, and depending on your protection goals, you can use one of the following components to protect your data in a Recovery Services vault in Azure:
- Azure Backup (MARS) agent
- System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM)
- Azure Backup Server
- Azure IaaS VM Backup
Note that while all Azure Backup components enable you to protect your data using a Recovery Services vault in Azure, the Azure Backup Server also enables the storage of backup data to a locally attached disk, and the System Center DPM component enables the protection of backed-up data to a locally attached disk and on-premises tape libraries. Azure Backup also provides some support for protecting Linux computers.
When storing backups in Azure, depending on the backup component you utilize, once the data is backed up at the protection point, it is compressed and stored in an Azure-based online storage entity called a Recovery Services vault, and, based on your storage needs, you can enable high availability through locally-redundant or geographically redundant storage replication. You can monitor backup metrics and connect to the OMS Monitoring solution for Azure backup..
The following figure depicts an Azure Backup data flow, a backed-up data relay to an Azure Recovery Services vault, storage replication of protected data, the monitoring of backup statistics, and the viewing of backup reports with Power BI, as well as the monitoring of backup parameters with the OMS monitoring solution: