Windows Azure Recovery Services

  • Tutorial
Quite often, when working with the Windows Azure cloud platform, many customers need a service to back up data stored in the cloud or hosted on local servers. In case we are considering a SQL Azure database, everything is simple - SQL Azure Data Sync. But what if, for example, such functionality is needed for virtual machines? For data that is not relational or not stored in a relational database?

Just a couple of months ago (or rather, in April of this year), the Microsoft team developing the Windows Azure cloud platform announced a separate service to solve a similar, often encountered problem. His name is Recovery Services . This thing allows you to save data backups from machines running Windows Server.

The meaning of this service is very simple. A special program (Windows Azure Backup Agent) is installed on the machine, the data of which should be stored in the cloud and running Windows Server, which, according to the schedule, also manually synchronizes the selected data. It supports backing up entire sections, as well as individual folders and files.

Comparison


As you know, a large amount of data, let's say the same backups, can be stored in the storage service provided by Windows Azure. However, to access it, you must use the Windows Azure SDK (if we are writing our solution), or use third-party solutions (for example, Azure Storage Backup). I would like to have similar functionality out of the box.

Let's compare the capabilities of Windows Azure Recovery Services and Windows Azure Storage:

* - geo-replication. The ability to replicate data within a region. In each region, for example, Europe, there are two data centers (sub-regions): West Europe and North Europe. Your data is replicated within the sub-regions, that is, data hosted in the storage region of West Europe will be replicated in the North Europe region and vice versa.

As we can see from the table, the Windows Azure Storage services are available in more data centers, cheaper, and support geo-replication capabilities. At the same time, Recovery Services lacks all these advantages. But work with Recovery Services is not charged through transactions. In addition, do not forget that the entire setup of Recovery Services is reduced to installing additional software on a Windows Server machine, while in order to implement data backup functionality in storage, you need to develop your own software or use third-party software.

Now let's make a simple tablet and compare the costs of storing backups in storage and using Recovery Services.

* - the level of salaries is taken according to a study for the city of Kiev. Median. Experience: 1-2 years.
** - since Windows Azure Recovery Services is currently in a “preview” state, the price has been reduced by 50%.

In the article on SQL Reporting services, I was reproached for not taking into account the possible costs of a specialist who would serve the relevant technologies. This time I tried to take this remark into account.

As we can see from the table at the “net” cost of Storage Services, Recovery Services is much cheaper and the larger the volume of data stored, the greater this difference. However, if we add to the comparison the salaries of the respective specialists supporting each of the solutions, then Recovery Services becomes cheaper. At the same time, this difference also melts as the amount of stored data increases.

Thus, the decision about which of the services to use should be made in accordance with the requirements of each specific task.

Next time we will look at the process of setting up Recovery Services for Windows Server. Thank you all for your attention!

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