A backup policy is the rulebook for your backups. It defines how often backups are taken (the schedule) and how long they are kept (retention). You can manage both operational backups, which are continuous and have no schedule, and vaulted backups, which follow a defined schedule, within a single policy. For vaulted backups, you choose between daily or weekly schedules and set retention rules, often using a structure like grandparent-parent-child to keep some backups longer than others. Retention can be set for up to 10 years to meet organizational or legal requirements.
To apply these policies, you first need a Backup vault. This vault is the storage location for all your backup data. You create it and then link it to your storage accounts. When configuring backup, you select which specific storage accounts and even which containers inside them you want to protect. Azure Backup will check that you have the right permissions and that the setup is valid before enabling protection. An important security feature is immutable vaults, which lock recovery points so they cannot be deleted before their expiry date, protecting against threats like ransomware.
Implement Azure Recovery Services Vault Creation
An Azure Recovery Services vault is a central management resource for backup and disaster recovery. It stores backup data, recovery points, and replication information for resources like Azure Virtual Machines and Azure Files. Creating this vault is the first step in building a data protection strategy. You must specify a subscription, a resource group for organization, a unique name, and, most critically, the region. The vault must be in the same region as the resources it will protect.
You can create the vault through the Azure Portal, PowerShell, ARM templates, or the REST API. A key decision during creation is selecting the storage redundancy, which determines how your backup data is copied for safety. Geo-redundant storage (GRS) replicates data to a paired Azure region for maximum durability and is the default. Locally redundant storage (LRS) keeps copies within a single data center and is lower cost. Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) replicates across availability zones within one region. This setting must be chosen before any backups are configured, as it becomes locked afterward.
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