Dominic Green
Practice Lead – Cloud Computing
Instant File Recovery from Cloud using Azure Backup
Microsoft Azure have recently announced an update to the Azure Backup service which allows for ‘instant recovery’.
This small update offers a big difference to the backup solution by enabling true granular recovery on both Azure Virtual Machines and virtual or physical servers located off the platform.
Previously, granular recovery of Azure Virtual Machines would require deploying a clone of the existing backed up virtual Machines and logging into this new virtual machine and copying historic files across. Once complete you would then need to delete the virtual machine and wait for the next recovery request, and then repeat this rather onerous process.
Now, however, you can instantly restore by choosing a restore point on the backed up virtual machine and running a quick program which will mount a disk to the virtual machine and allow you to choose the files to recover.
This can be achieved in a few clicks and the disk will be held open for 12 hours, for recovery purposes, before being removed from the virtual machine.
Similarly, for on-premises servers, the program is run and a disk is attached to the server and recovery can be completed instantly.
Thinking about this new service, and the ability to quickly recover individual items, this small update becomes a prime candidate to be used to protect against zero-day exploits by enabling regular backups to be taken. The combination of the service and instant recoverability could seriously minimise a malware/virus event within your environment.
