Backups

Question 1

How can you back up a virtual machine?

Answer 1

In the azure ui of the vm, go to the operations section in the blade menu and click backup.

Question 2

What is a backup vault?

Answer 2

It is a special type of storage for backup disks

Question 3

What is a backup policy?

Answer 3

It is the schedule at which backups are made and other configurations such as how many days a bento suit be instantly recoverable for and the retention period.

Question 4

How can you browse your backups?

Answer 4

In the azure marketplace go to backups and site recovery and create a new account for that using the create button.

This is how you create the backup vault and then you can use it to enable backups on your vm.

You have to create a backup in the same region and resource group as the VMs you want to back up. Multi region VMs will need multiple backup vaults in order to avoid slow backup recovery.

Question 5

What is back up immutability?

Answer 5

Concept of not being able to modify or delete something. Enabling backup immutability in the context of azure backups means that the backup image cannot be changed. This is a security measure to ensure that the recovered system can be trusted to have the same image as the original backup’s.

Question 6

Can public networks access backup vaults?

Answer 6

Yes, there is an option during creation to allow public access or to force the configuration of what networks can access it.

Question 7

Do all regions support globally redundant storage for backup vaults?

Answer 7

No, some do not offer GRS and instead offer zone redundant storage instead.

Question 8

What is the default setting fit backup vaults related to soft deletion?

Answer 8

It is turned on by default.

Question 9

What types of content does azure backup support?

Answer 9

• Azure VMs
• azure stack hub
• azure stack hci
• on premises

Question 10

What are the differences between standard and enhanced backup policies?

Answer 10

Question 11

How to check what resources are being backed up?

Answer 11

Go to the backup vault azure portal ui and click backed up items from the protected items section of the blade menu.

Question 12

How to make a manual backup?

Answer 12

In the backed up items list, click the ellipsis of the resource you want to back up and and click back up now.

Question 13

Does backing up use vm resources?

Answer 13

Yes, primarily cpu resources so it should be timed in low workload periods.

Question 14

How can you browse files from a vm snapshot?

Answer 14

Note that if you need a file which is larger than 12Gb you are forced to restore the whole backup.

Go to the vm ui operations then backup. You’ll see the backup status of the vm and at the top of the page there is file recovery button.

If you click this button, you will be prompted to download an executable which will mount the back as a file system on your local file system, grab the files you need and then the mount will disappear after 12 hours or when you click unmount disk from the azure ui.

Question 15

How to restore a vm from a backup?

Answer 15

Go to the vm, go to backup from the blade Menu, then click restore vm at the top of the ui. You’ll be prompted to choose the restore point image. You can then replace or deploy the new vm based on a backup to different subscriptions, resource groups etc.

Question 16

How can you set up on-prem backups?

Answer 16

When creating the backup vault, on premises is an option for where the workload is running. You can also here define what you want to backup.

Question 17

What is bare metal recovery?

Answer 17

It is essentially backing up all non physical components of a system so it would include operating system , disks, configuration data and applications. Firmware usually falls outside of this scope.

Question 18

What is the requirement for running an on prem backup server?

Answer 18

The server must be running an appropriate agent or software (MABS is Microsoft azure backup server).

You need to download the credentials so that the server can authenticate with the azure backup service.

Question 19

Where can you find backup reports?

Answer 19

From the backup vault ui go to backup reports from the blade menu and filter the date to be included in the report.

Note that you will need to set the type of data to be made available to the reports via the diagnostic settings link in the blade menu.

Question 20

How can you query backup logs?

Answer 20

From the backup vault’s logs menu you can either use predefined or create your own kusto query language queries.

Question 21

What is soft delete for backups?

Answer 21

Soft delete when enabled leaves you a period after deletion where you can change your mind and restore the deleted backups. This is a security feature to avoid that malicious code or people can destroy your backups without hope of recovery. By default they can be restored during 14 days port deletion on new recovery services vaults (RSV). If you have older RSV then you can go and enable that now.

Question 22

What is azure site recovery?

Answer 22

Azure Site Recovery is a disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) offering from Microsoft Azure. It enables businesses to replicate their workloads running on virtual machines (VMs) from their on-premises data centers to Azure or between Azure regions. This replication helps ensure business continuity in case of outages or disasters by providing failover and failback capabilities. Azure Site Recovery supports various scenarios, including Hyper-V, VMware, and physical servers, and it allows for customizable recovery plans to orchestrate the failover process and automate the failback once the primary site is restored. Overall, it helps organizations maintain high availability and minimize downtime for their critical applications and services.

Question 23

What is ASR to site-to-site replication?

Answer 23

ASR (Azure Site Recovery) to site-to-site replication refers to the capability of Azure Site Recovery to replicate virtual machines (VMs) from an on-premises data center to another on-premises location, also known as site-to-site replication.

In this scenario, Azure Site Recovery serves as the intermediary service that facilitates the replication process between the two on-premises sites. This setup is useful for organizations that want to establish a disaster recovery solution between their primary data center and a secondary location, such as a remote office or a separate data center.

With ASR site-to-site replication, businesses can ensure redundancy and high availability for their critical workloads by replicating VMs to a secondary site. In the event of a disaster or outage at the primary site, the VMs can be quickly failed over to the secondary site, minimizing downtime and ensuring business continuity.

Question 24

How to setup a disaster recovery mechanism for a vm?

Answer 24

From the vm azure portal ui, click the disaster recovery link in the operations section of the blade menu. You will see a map of other regions where you could replicate your vm for failover in the case of a disaster in the current region.

The options will be close to you to make the failover as fast as possible.

It will essentially deploy a secondary everything ( NSG, resource group etc.) in the failover region. These will remain inactive until a failover even when they will become the master services and traffic will be directed to them.

Note that it will take about 30 minutes for the setup failover to complete so it’s possible that if you click the disaster recovery link immediately that it looks like nothing has changed.

Question 25

How to check the replicated items in your disaster recovery plan?

Answer 25

Under replicated items in the protected items section of the blade menu.

Question 26

How can you test your disaster recovery strategy?

Answer 26

From the vm ui if you click the disaster recovery link in the operations section of the blade menu, you will see a dashboard for the specific virtual machine and there will be a test failover link at the top of the dashboard.

Another way to reach the dashboard is to go to the backup vault and click the vm in the protected items screen and you’ll arrive at the same dashboard.

Note that the test failover doesn’t actually perform the failover, however there is a failover button which will perform the failover completely and the failover resources will become the master resources to which all traffic is sent.