Azure Backup System State Backup is generally available

This announcement was made last month, but I thought it would be worth mentioning as it ties into the previous post about how to leverage Azure with your Windows Server deployments. System State backup with MARS Agent is now generally available in all Azure regions. With this release, the MARS Agent has full production support for protecting data and operating system configuration on Windows file servers, Active Directory, and IIS web servers that are hosted on any Windows Server version from Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2016.

For those of you with good outbound internet connectivity, here is an easy to set up way of creating offsite backups. Don't forget that one of the other capabilities you have with Azure Backup is that it can also back up files and folders from Windows client devices. Why would you use this? The main scenarios that are discussed here are for those with devices that are usually connected to the internet, but not necessarily on the work network where other centralised backups may be taking place on a scheduled basis.

Following is the intro from the blog post announcing the new features...

We are excited to announce the general availability (GA) of Windows Server System State Backup to Azure with the Azure Backup agent. We previewed the direct offsite of Windows Server System State to Azure using the Azure Backup agent earlier this year. This was a key addition to Azure Backup agent’s existing capability of backing up files and folders directly to Azure. With this GA release, the Azure Backup agent has full production support for protecting Windows File Servers, Active Directory, and IIS Web servers hosted on Windows Server 2016 all the way back to Windows Server 2008 R2. Backing up your Windows Server System State to Azure gives you a simple, secure and cost-effective way of protecting Windows Servers and enabling the recovery of dynamic OS and application configuration from Azure in the event of an IT disaster.