Azure Backup Reviews

We primarily use the solution as a backup.

With on-premises servers, you can have a long-term archival sitting on public clouds, like Azure. That is also one of the very good use cases where you're avoiding all the tape requirements for your long-term archival. 

It's a native solution provided by Microsoft. It solves the needs we have. We are using it at most places, unless, and until there is some specific requirement where there's a database or something, which you're getting out of the box from Azure Backup. That's when we go for other third-party backup solutions. Otherwise, for the VM backups and all of that, it's a great product. It's one of the best solutions for backups.

It's easy to use. 

The storage cost is not too much. 

It gives you what you would like to have from a basic solution, like machine backup, or for your snapshots. Everything can be done from the platform itself. 

The management interface is very intuitive and familiar. It makes it a lot easier for anyone to manage it or to actually work on it.

The integration with the record database and integration with other applications will be good, especially with the database piece. MySQL and Oracle are very widely used databases and Azure Backup doesn't have tight integration with them. It only provides the backup of the disc and the virtual machine and associated data, however, it doesn't provide you an application of their backup for non-Microsoft products, especially. That is where SQL Server, which is a Microsoft database, provides a good integration for the initial backup in MySQL which is a widely used database solution. They should actually provide that or you can handle integration with those databases as well.

The most important thing is integration with third-party products. That could be one of the best features. Whenever we have to look for databases or specific applications, that's when things get complicated and where third parties, like Win Backup, Symantec, and other backup solutions come in. The most important thing they can do to improve is to cover at least industry standard databases first.

I've been using the solution for seven or eight years now. 

The backup stability is good.

Scalability is fine. For any mid-size org, it is a good solution. We have done it for close to 2,000 servers, so it is working fine.

In terms of tech support, I'm disappointed with support. It's not like earlier days. Earlier Microsoft tech support used to be one of the best. Now that's not the case. You have long queues and you have to wait a bit longer compared to earlier. What I can say is there are a lot of articles, and there are self-help resources. Those are available. That actually helps in troubleshooting. You do not always have to open a ticket unless and until there is something really critical. You just don't get a timely response.

Neutral

I have used AWS. Azure is a more mature product. AWS didn't used to have a backup solution. 

It's easy to deploy.

We have a deployment team. There is usually very few people dealing with the implementation. You might have eight to ten guys doing the migration and other things. Recently, we did a project where there were close to 1,000 servers that have to be moved to the public cloud and we implemented Azure Backup for all of them. It didn't take much of our time since the management and the interface are very easy and you don't have much to do over there. 

It's a slow process. You're not moving all of them at one shot. We'll do 15 to 20 servers in a batch, which we are doing based on the applications. One application, we are going to move at a given time. If there are 15 to 20 servers within one particular application, it takes hardly a few hours to go and do everything. However, if there are many, many applications, it will take time.

We handle the implementation for our clients. 

The ROI is good based on the cost itself. The upfront cost itself is less and it includes your licensing and hosting and everything. There are no other industry-standard backups like it. The licensing costs are very high and you need it in front of all of that. It is hosted on the cloud. Even if you go with something which is hosted on the cloud, the license cost is high. If you compare it with other costs of solutions, Microsoft has done a good job of providing a native backup solution with very affordable pricing. 

The cost for Azure backup is purely based on the size of the data and the virtual machine as well as the number of virtual machines. It's around $10 to $15 per month per virtual machine, along with something extra based on the size of the data. It covers 500 GBs or something like that. If you go beyond that for a virtual machine, you will have to pay extra.

We're Microsoft partners and we do have many customers who are using the Microsoft platform.

We are always using the latest version of the solution. 

It's on-cloud and in some servers on-premises, which we are taking from the backup cloud. It's mostly for the infrastructure sitting on the cloud.

The solution should be an eight out of ten.

Potential users should actually look for compatibility. With any service that you talk about in a public cloud, one should first understand the requirement and then they should do some sort of research or they should, if they're new to it, have a look into the compatibility and the articles. Those are provided by Microsoft in terms of basic requirements or constraints that they have. They have a lot of constraints around. You have to be very careful which geography it is. What is the cost and what kinds of constraints do they have in terms of compatibility with any operating system or application? Those are the four or five things that one should look at before considering it as a solution or implementation.

We generally use the solution for VM backups. 

With a couple of buttons, we can configure a VM for a backup and use the wall service, the storage wall service, pretty seamlessly. 

From a day-to-day operation perspective, the installation and configuration of the Azure Backup and the backup timing are great. It offers a non-intrusive backup - like a snapshot type of backup. This way, we don't see any impact when running the backup and the job runs without any problem unless the VM host itself is having some problems. 

From the stability aspect of it, the execution aspect, I don't see any issues.

I didn't see any kind of major flaws or anything. The only thing I would say that could be improved is the reporting. It can be a little more customized or something like that. Maybe they need a little bit more on the dashboard view. The reporting and governance can be a little more fine-tuned.

I've used the solution for 18 months or so.

The solution is stable. The performance is great There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

We haven't really used technical support in the past. We went with them due to the fact that it's not a complicated use case for us, so we haven't really seen any issue. We haven't really dealt with Azure Backup-related troubleshooting or anything.

I work for a client who pays for the solution. My understanding is the costs vary year to year. I don't really have any visibility, however. 

If you're hosting a majority of your platform in Azure, this solution should be okay. Azure Backup is probably the easiest solution to with, rather than bringing another third party into the mix. As a consolidated solution, the Azure Backup will work well - if your native cloud platform is Azure.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

Currently, I have Many Azure VMs for clients, and We are  doing the backup, disaster recovery, and tactical replication for all of them.

We install the backup stack for our clients. We explain the situation and have our technical team complete the installation for the clients.

With set up managed retention using the backup policy. We do retention, and we do security. 

The level of security is high on it.

Most of our clients used to have Mac storage in all of their offices, such as NAS (network-attached storage) by 20, or 30 terabytes. We have informed our clients, rather than keep their storage on-premises and risking it getting damaged with no disaster recovery, it would be better to synchronize it and move it to the cloud. Some of the clients will keep it on the cloud while some others have to keep it on-premises and on the cloud at the same time for direct synchronization.

The backup is configured as replication or synchronized between both of them.

When we install for the client, they have a full solution. All of their computers are connected to a single sign-on with Office 365. They all have a domain on the Microsoft cloud. Included with this we add Azure, all of their HR software, ERP, and accounting on the cloud. The add-on backup to the environment will be with Microsoft.

One of the most valuable features is security and connectivity to the data.

The hardware is nice. We configure the hardware and can choose anywhere from two cores to 56 cores. 

We configure the machines the way we want.

We are using two different types of technology. Side to side and tier to side. Recently, we sent an email regarding this issue. Maybe they could improve the fees. The cost is a bit high.

If we had 100 users, and we are using the backup on servers, it would be helpful if the user could know the level of synchronization that he has done. It can only be done by administrative forces. As an example, if I am the administrator and I have users getting data online, I can see what is happening. However, for the user, if they are experiencing some kind of failure with their data, they do not receive any notification and do not know. It will work, but it will need a lot of customization.

We would like to see some kind of notification given to the user that a file was not synchronized properly or what may have happened. What we are doing now is through a third party system where they will notify us if a file is not synchronized properly inside of his computer.

We have been using this solution since 2016, so it's been almost four years.

We are now using the latest version.

The solution is stable.

With our clients, there is a 95% success rate, for the remaining 5%, sometimes it's a problem with the network or a problem with the files.

If we give them a server and storage they need to choose a security method if they want to protect their data. They need to add more to be available inside their servers. If a client hasn't chosen protection for his data and his data has malware or any virus, it is not under our umbrella, they must choose their security methods. For most of our clients, we provide security for them.

This solution is scalable and it's easy. It's like you are using your computer folder. We will be mapping. We would map the file to the server. It's like a new folder, a C, D, E, or F. New storage inside the servers will be created.

One of the clients that we have now has 50 terabytes of storage. We have created another server on a cloud backup for these 50 terabytes. They have 100 users that are using this backup through file sharing.

We always get direct support. I am supported well.

We use to have SAN storage , attached to our physical server 

But after being shifted to azure , we felt the performance and security more 

You need someone with experience to complete the initial setup. If you bring in an engineer or a computer science person who doesn't have experience in Microsoft then he cannot do it. They might be able to install the Windows Operating Systems and Active Directory but they won't be able to connect to the VM online on the cloud. They need some experience. If someone trains them, they can get it in one day or maybe two.

In my experience, each installation with us can take 18 days if the client requests an on-premises deployment. If they need just a server to create a backup, we will create a virtual machine online, which will take one or two days.

It will take time for an on-premises installation because we will install the server locally. This includes the operating system, the links, and connecting them to the server and then to the cloud. It will work online or offline. This will take 15 to 18 days.

Again, to backup online, for the server and Active Directory, it will be one day to complete.

We are using a file-shared backup; one for on-premise and one on the private cloud.

Our clients are seeing that it is cost-effective.

The fees are a bit expensive. When clients see improvements and see a product out of the box, clients will not look at the price, but the price could be lower. 

Support payment works by the level of partnership and the number of shares.

As a gold partner, we have more than 50 hours of support per year and this is more than enough. With the 50 hours, I get a one hour call. If I have a problem and I call, they have one hour to call me, and I have unlimited calls if I need them to call me after 24 hours or the next day. 

As gold partners, we generate the licenses for our clients and we pay monthly. Our clients pay annually or make two payments per year.

Sure , like any solution we just make evaluation and testing 

That’s what we have done before starting with azure backup 

Before doing a backup or getting any cloud solutions, you must first check the environment and the systems. Most companies will have computers in a workgroup. Each must have its own domain and Active Directory. 

You will have to do the know-how technologies inside the company for the basic configuration. Then they can choose and start. You know longer have to use storage that will stay inside the office because anyone can unplug it and take it with them.

With a cloud solution, you can specify which MAC address, user, environment, or region can get the data from the server.

I have been using Microsoft for 16 years. I am very familiar with all of the Microsoft technology.

Now they have the cloud, Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Azure, so we transfer and we have been awarded the digital technology transformation three times.

We are a cybersecurity company that cares about security for our clients.

As a gold partner and CSP partner, we have our portal. If a client needs 100 Azure servers then I can create them directly for him, without having to contact Microsoft or anyone. I can create them and the charges will come to me monthly. Also, I can choose the mode of payment, be it monthly or annually. There is also the rebate and the cashback that will come with yearly or monthly billing.

I don't see any problems with Azure. It gives our clients peace of mind. Data is important.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We use Commvault for on premises clients and the Azure Backup for cloud-based clients.

This solution is easy to configure and restore. It is a Microsoft product so is easily compatible with other solutions.

The restoration of permissions is a functionality that could be improved. If I want to restore permissions, I should be able to do this. 

Secondly, there is a limitation of 99 files restores per day which means that we can't complete a huge file restore. We would like Azure to increase the number of the possible file restorations.

I have been using this solution for five years.

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution besides the limitations on file restorations.

It takes a long time to resolve support tickets with the Microsoft support team. They could offer faster resolution of tickets. I would rate them a two out of five. 

Neutral

We use Azure Backup alongside Commvault Hyperscale X. The latter offers a compression ratio that is much higher compared to Azure Backup. There are no limitations on file restorations using Commvault. 

Azure Backup is free and we are only charged for storage. Commvault is definitely costly compared to Azure Backup.

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward, 

Azure offers competitive pricing and charges us only for the storage space that we use. 

We use this solution for across-the-board data protection. That includes VMs, and storage pools for basically any level of recoverability whether for files, storage pools or transactional data. I'm an enterprise architect. 

Backup helps quite a bit in terms of immediate recovery and immediate restoration. It's very helpful when it comes to data corruption, file damage, or inadvertent deletions. The other component is the relatively broad data protection we get across the entire Azure landing zone. It backs up efficiently and reports better than a lot of traditional tools. 

I think the extensibility onto hybrid environments needs a bit of tweaking. It's great in the cloud but when you're on-prem it requires quite a bit of infrastructure in terms of Azure ARC and bringing it back. 

I've been using this solution for around four years. 

The solution is quite stable and reliable. We've had a few little nominal outages, but nothing terrible. It's much more reliable than any of the traditional on-premise kind of private cloud environments. 

The solution is very scalable for us but scalability depends on your location.There are no problems accessing Azure in Europe or North America but if you're looking at the newer regions, they're slower in adding the same capability. I used Azure in Dublin because there was no Azure in Africa. When they turned on Azure in South Africa we had to switch to that but we only got 50% of the functionality. South Africa should have been brought to the same level before we had to make the move from Dublin. It's taken us backward. 

The initial setup is fairly standard and not too complex. Deployment generally takes a few days depending on the size. Anything to do with data retention takes more time as we have to define the backup schedules and retention and those kinds of things. Validating the backups is quick and efficient but determining which data we need to keep and for how long, takes time. Those are all issues related to the customer.

Deployment steps are basically about carrying out an inventory of the workloads. You want to guard the types of protection you're applying specifically to databases versus different systems and services, and then how that ties into full recoverability. That would take a week maximum in the worst case and we do that internally. 

We usually have two systems engineers involved in maintenance. Different projects require different capacities.

ROI is very good as long as you modernize your solutions and then it brings quite a saving. If you don't upgrade to cloud, and you just do a lift and shift, it'll kill you with the cost.

Licensing costs are consumption-based so the more storage we eat, the more data we protect, the greater the cost.

It's important to ensure that the capabilities you require are available in your region. Feature availability per region is the most important thing. You can't do a design for Azure in North America and then think that it's going to work everywhere. Azure is not consistent so you may be forced to buy third-party products that you didn't budget for.

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

We can implement Azure Backup for any customer who wants to back up their servers, whether on-premises, AWS, or any other cloud. We can implement the solution in such scenarios if the customer doesn't have an existing backup in place.

Azure Backup is easy to manage from a single dashboard.

The solution should involve more redundancy types in the backup storage and support open-source OS.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

Azure Backup is a highly scalable solution that can support a large amount of volume but lacks horizontal scaling. Ideally, we need to either push the MARS agent via SCCM or use some kind of tool to deploy the MARS agent in all the VMs. Although the solution's vertical scaling is pretty good, its horizontal scaling could be improved. Around 80% to 90% of our customers use Azure Backup in some way or another.

The solution's technical support is okay, but even the support team cannot do anything if the feature lacks something.

We have customers using other backup tools like Veritas Backup or Commvault Backup. Azure Backup is easy to manage from a single dashboard. If it is on-premises, customers can still take a backup of the on-premises environment if they don't want to increase the on-premises storage. Ultimately, it's an upfront cost for them. In that way, they won't use Azure Backup but will use Azure Storage to save one more copy on the cloud.

The solution’s initial setup is straightforward.

The solution's deployment time depends on the size of the environment. If there are fewer VMs, it will take less time to deploy. If we consider only one VM where we need to deploy a backup, then it will hardly take an hour or so to deploy it along with the recovery point. The deployment time also depends on the data.

If it is an Azure environment, the solution can be deployed in just a few clicks, and it will start taking a backup. If it is any third-party environment, users need to spend some more time on the deployment.

The solution's return on investment depends on the size of the environment.

Customers choose their backup tool based on its flexibility and cost-effectiveness. Customers prefer Azure Backup because it has a pay-as-you-go model, and they won't have to pay an upfront amount at the initial level. The solution's pricing and licensing depend on the environment.

We use the solution to protect specific data types or environments, such as an SQL database, a normal VM, or a file share. I suggest Azure Backup for a small or medium environment with 30 to 40 VMs. For a big environment, I suggest third-party backup tools, which are more flexible and manageable because they come with single dashboards.

Overall, I rate Azure Backup an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case of Azure Backup is for data on our application servers. We host our ERP systems with SQL for backend software. 

We've been in partnership with Microsoft for more than 15 years. I'm the CEO and the CIO. 

Before we started using Azure we spent a lot of money at our various sites, setting one up as the main physical site and a second for disaster recovery. We had to invest a lot of money to buy hardware that needed replacing every two or three years. Switching to Azure has saved us thousands. The hardware is always updated and we're now able to invest more in our staff which is highly beneficial because it translates to satisfied clients.  

As a security setting, Azure is very detailed. We can add features on retentions and retain the backup for several days. The retention policies are very good. I like the notifications and multiple layers of security that the solution offers. It enables us and our clients to feel secure and you can install and connect your systems wherever you are. 

We're hoping the price of the solution won't increase in the coming months when Azure is due to review all its products. I think that what the product lacks now is an AI system; if we had that, we'd be able to more easily upgrade the hardware system.  

We've been using this solution for about seven years. 

We haven't had any stability issues. If the initial setup is done properly there won't be any issues with stability. 

The scalability is good. We have around 12 users in the department. Some of them provide techno support and others do testing on the system to check its abilities because sometimes it has too much load. 

Customer support is very good. 

The initial setup was straightforward. Deployment time depends on the size of the data.

We pay over $8 million per year in licensing fees for 365 and Azure usage. There is no additional cost for hardware but we train our employees and that is an added cost for us. 

We had a look at Amazon before going with Azure but we decided to go the whole way with Microsoft. These days, I'm not sure there's much difference between the two.   

It's important to know what you'll be getting from whoever provides you with the solution because it's important that support is included. This product has really helped me in scaling up my company. We love this solution and think everyone should have it. 

As a provider and a user, I rate this solution 10 out of 10. 

We use Azure Backup as part of our disaster recovery solution. If there is a problem in the entire building then we can restore our data from over the cloud.

Azure Backup is very good for our clients that need to back up data securely and reliably.

Azure Backup is good because it is entirely cloud-based, which means that you can be 99.9% sure that your backup is safe. This is the reason that I suggest its use for companies that need to back up critical data.

The compression ratio of the backup data should be improved. Compared to our on-premises solution, the compression of Azure Backup is not as good. For example, if I am backing up up 100 GB of data then it should be compressed by at least 70%. Instead, it is being compressed by 30% to 35%. Because of this, the utilization of resources in terms of cloud storage is increasing. Given that the cost of cloud-based storage is not cheap, this is an area that is in need of improvement.

The interface should be more user-friendly.

The Azure team in Microsoft technical support needs to improve.

More guidelines and information about use-cases should be available for reference online.

We have been using Azure Backup for almost two years.

The day-to-day usage of this solution is quite normal.

This is a scalable solution.

I am generally satisfied with the technical support, although I would only rate them a six and a half out of ten. From what I have seen, the engineers are not well versed in all of the possible backup scenarios. The knowledge that they have is limited.

For example, in my two years of experience, I think that I was able to better troubleshoot some of the issues better than they were. My intention is not to berate them but I think that they should be more knowledgable about the product.

Level two and three seem to have enough knowledge, although it still takes a significant amount of time.

We use Azure Backup in conjunction with Veeam. Veeam is responsible for our on-premises backup that includes data and file systems. It also put a copy of our data onto the cloud.

We have a hybrid solution because the bandwidth in my country is quite expensive and if we have to do a restore, it is better to have an on-premises capability for that.

The initial setup was not as straightforward as I expected. I was facing certain challenges and I was deeply in contact with the Azure team from Microsoft technical support. It took quite some time for them to resolve my issues. My case was escalated to level three support and to reach that level, it took 10 to 14 working days.

It takes very serious research or good troubleshooting skills to eliminate some of the complex problems that can occur.

In total, it took us about a month to deploy.

This is an expensive solution because of the requirements for cloud-based storage. We are paying about $100,000 USD per year, just for a couple of servers.

My advice to anybody who is considering this solution is that if you can afford it, then I would highly recommend it because the service provides very good value.

The software is very capable but the information available for support is limited.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.