Backup and disaster recovery are brilliant applications for cloud and Microsoft now reckons it has made Azure an enterprise-grade contender, at least for workloads and data already in Azure.

Redmond’s revealed that Azure Backup’s had an upgrade that delivers the following:

• Ability to view all backup policies in a Recovery Services vault from a single window
• Ability to add a new policy from policy list view
• Ability to edit a backup policy to match modified backup schedule and retention requirements – once a backup policy is updated, changes are pushed automatically to all virtual machines configured with the policy
• Ability to add items to a backup policy – add more virtual machines to an existing backup policy in a single click
• Get a view of virtual machines protected with a policy
• Delete a backup policy which is no longer in use

There’s nothing startling on that list, but there is some nice automation and sensible enhancements that if applied thoughtfully should protect Azure VMs rather nicely.

And enterprise grade? There’s a bit of “any colour you want so long as it is black” in that claim, seeing as Azure Backup only backs up Azure. At the very least it’s a very useful set of new features that makes Azure more robust while highlighting how the cloud can be a rather simpler environment than the complication that is on-premises storage held across storage appliances that may or not have been made with backup in mind. But there’s still plenty of room for the likes of Veeam, CommVault and their ilk to point out how they can add value and nuance. ®

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