Introduction

Completed

Azure Backup enables you to back up and recover Windows Server infrastructure as a service (IaaS) virtual machines (VMs), which includes full VM and file-level recovery.

Scenario

Contoso is a medium-size financial services company in London with a branch office in New York. Most of its compute environment runs on-premises on Windows Server. This includes virtualized workloads on Windows Server 2012 R2 hosts. Contoso IT staff are in the process of migrating Contoso servers to Windows Server 2019.

Contoso’s IT director realizes that Contoso has an outdated operational model with limited automation and reliance on dated technology. The Contoso IT Engineering team has started exploring Microsoft Azure capabilities. They want to determine whether Azure services might assist with modernizing the current operational model through automation and virtualization.

As part of the initial design, the Contoso IT team asked you, their lead system engineer and server administrator, to set up a proof of concept environment. This environment must verify whether Azure services can help to modernize the IT infrastructure and meet business goals.

The company still relies on tape backups for restores and disaster recovery. As part of the move to Azure, they need to consider alternative backup and recovery procedures.

In this module, you'll learn about Azure Backup before learning to implement Recovery Vaults and Azure Backup Policies. You'll then learn how to implement Windows IaaS VM recovery, perform backup and restore of on-premises workloads, and manage Azure VM backups.

By the end of this module, you'll be ready to help the Contoso IT team use Azure Backup to back up and recover Windows Server IaaS VMs.

Learning objectives

After completing this module, you will be able to:

  • Describe Azure Backup.
  • Implement Azure Recovery Services vaults.
  • Implement Azure Backup policies.
  • Recover Windows IaaS VMs.
  • Perform file and folder recovery.
  • Perform backup and recovery of on-premises workloads.
  • Explain how to manage Azure VM backups with Azure Backup.

Prerequisites

In order to get the best learning experience from this module, it's important that you have knowledge and experience of the following:

  • Managing Windows Server operating system and Windows Server workloads in on-premises scenarios, including Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), Domain Name System (DNS), the Distributed File System (DFS), Microsoft Hyper-V, and file and storage services
  • Common Windows Server management tools
  • Core Microsoft compute, storage, networking, and virtualization technologies
  • On-premises resiliency Windows Server–based compute and storage technologies
  • Implementing and managing IaaS services in Azure
  • Microsoft Entra ID
  • Security-related technologies (firewalls, encryption, multi-factor authentication)
  • Windows PowerShell scripting
  • Automation and monitoring