Azure Backup Reviews

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.

Azure Backup is very simple to use and user-friendly. From the technical side, features like the tenant and the restoration part are much better. It's a Microsoft tool, and all the info we have based on the VMs will be built on the Azure platform. It's easy for us to do the backup in its OEM tool.

Azure Backup has some drawbacks. We can't have the granular level restoration, particularly for the Azure files. Sometimes, indexing doesn't happen in the Azure files. That's why we are keen to have a solution that can consider all the applications, all the OS, and the legacy applications.

One of the disadvantages of Azure Backup is that it doesn't have a MAC backup. In Azure, we cannot take the MAC backup for Mac devices.

Azure Backup's licensing model is very challenging because it doesn't give a clear picture. Whenever we go to the vendor or the OEM to buy some of the workloads, we have to take everything. We have to pay for the VMs and the storage in the Azure platform. Hence, the licensing model should be very simple for the end user to get things easily.

I have been working with Azure Backup for three years.

I rate Azure Backup a nine out of ten for stability.

I rate Azure Backup an eight and a half out of ten for scalability. Two thousand five hundred users use the solution in my company.

We have partner support from Azure Backup. Usually, we can see support in the stipulated time. We get the support based on the SLA timeline.

Positive

Since Azure Backup is a very user-friendly solution, its initial setup is very simple and shouldn't be a challenge for anyone.

We implemented the solution through our technical team.

We do not have any additional costs for Azure Backup.

Sometimes the solution has a huge bandwidth. However, it lags and does not completely perform when it has low bandwidth.

We have around 11 people involved in the maintenance of Azure Backup. Out of these 11 people, five people are from the solution architecture, and the rest are tech support partners.

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

We use Azure Backup to backup and restore virtual machines as well as SQL Databases.

The only issue we have right now is the amount of time it takes to restore. When we attempt to restore a virtual machine, it can take hours. This is an area that could be improved.

The length of time it takes to restore is our main source of frustration. It would be beneficial to shorten the time it takes.

We had issues with shared storage in the past where it couldn't be included in the backup. Shared storage, or shared disc, wasn't available. I believe Microsoft promised to put it in their pipeline for improvement in order to add this, but I haven't double-checked. This was the issue with shared managed discs, and not being included in this backup scope.

If the shared managed disc could be included with the backup, it would be better.

I have been using Azure Backup for three years.

Azure Backup is very stable.

Azure Backup is a scalable solution.

We work with it all of the time.

Technical support is very helpful. I would rate them a four out of five.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. It was something that was easy for us.

It was completed within a few minutes. It can depend on the environment, but usually, it is fast.

The number of staff required for maintenance depends on the automation. We require more staff now, but we are working on the automation. Generally, it is relatively low. For the most part, it works by itself.

We operate in our own environment.

Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis.

It's not an expensive solution. I am more than happy with the price.

We are working in our own environment, assisting KPMG users and firm members. We also have internal companies.

I am an Azure Architect.

It's useful, it works, and it's fairly reliable. The only issue right now isn't a big one, but our users sometimes need faster recovery, faster restoring of services, and faster restoring of data.

I would rate Azure Backup a nine out of ten.

We use Azure Backup to backup VMs.

The most valuable feature of Azure Backup is its ease of use and good integration with other Azure services.

The Azure Backup support for on-premises service is limited.

The file-level restore procedure should be more straightforward.

I have been using Azure Backup for approximately three years.

Azure Backup is stable.

Azure Backup can scale and it is easy to do.

The initial setup of Azure Backup is straightforward. It took 15 minutes to do the deployment.

I rate the initial setup of Azure Backup a four out of five.

I did the implementation of the solution.

I rate Azure Backup a seven out of ten.

The main use case is to back up the virtual machines.

It's part of the Azure cloud service. The solution is included in the overall price. 

The solution is stable.

The scalability has been good.

Technical support is okay. They do help you when you need them.

As I don't work directly with the solution (my team does), I don't have any notes for improvement.

Technical support can be slow to respond at times.

I've only been using the solution for two years. 

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

The solution is scalable. If a company needs to expand it, it's possible to do so.

Only the IT backups use the solution. That's just two people. No one else does. 

Technical support is okay. They are helpful, however, they are not always fast.

Previously, we only used Micro Focus Data Protector. We were on our data center on-premise. After the migration, to save, the machines to the Azure cloud, we switched from the VM backups to Azure Backup. The other backups are still running on Micro Focus Data Protector.

The initial setup is done by our cloud solution provider. While I'm not aware of the details. my understanding is that the deployment was quick and did not take long.

The solution is part of the greater Microsoft service. I am not sure if there is a separate license just for this. It's not an additional price. There may be more costs according to how much storage is needed. You have to do the backup to a storage account and the storage account costs a price per terabytes.

We are a customer with an enterprise agreement.

I do not backups myself. I don't know the versions we are using.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is for backups.

The solution helped us use R2 RBO to back up frequently and avoid losing data if we had system issues.

The most valuable features are the integrations because we are using Azure Cloud, which backs it up with all the Azure components.

Azure Backup is constantly improving its features. However, it can be further improved by continuously meeting its compliance requirements.

We have been using the solution for three years.

The solution is stable.

I rate the solution 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 it to backup on-premise data to Azure. We can backup the whole virtual machine to Azure if we need offsite backup. If you don't have any backup solution on-premise data center, you can rely on Azure Backup to do a backup to Azure, to the cloud. That means from on-premise to cloud backup, for data and virtual machines. 

It has many features. First of all, you can schedule a backup for the client as you like. You can also control the bandwidth so the backup will not utilize. The internet will depend on the bandwidth. You can also configure the retention period as you like and monitor everything from the cloud. You can monitor it from anywhere and you can log on and see. Doing a restore is also easy. It's easy to use.

The second thing is that if you have multiple computers and you need to utilize the bandwidth, you can install a dedicated server on the data center and let this backup server communicate with Azure and the local servers will only communicate with the local computers and the server only will communicate with Azure.

You can do a backup from the whole virtual machine as an image. You can do a backup only from files and folders. It has every option. All options are available for the backup, for the restore, for the bandwidth utilization to do backups even virtual machines or a physical machine. If you need to do a backup from the whole image from the virtual machine, all these options are there.

It doesn't have the option to have a backup from the database. It has a backup for the files, folders, and backup only the whole virtual machine. But if I need to do a backup from the Oracle database, from an Exchange server or from SharePoint, this ability isn't there. There is no application backup. 

We have been using Azure Backup for around three years. 

Stability depends on the bandwidth. It's very stable. If you have a good bandwidth, it's fine. If you don't have a good bandwidth, you can have a problem. If you have limited bandwidth, you will pay the cost. 

With cloud there is no limit. The limit is the sky and so for Microsoft infrastructure, there are two options. If you have a small data center, small servers or small computers and you need to do a backup, this is fine. You only need to install the agent. 

But if you have big servers or it's a number of servers, Microsoft also offers the ability to do a local Azure Backup and this Azure Backup will communicate with the local server and these servers can be communicated to the cloud and you can often install multiple servers. It will distribute different loads. 

I haven't needed to contact the support or get a ticket with the support team because the document and the tutorials were available and even when we try to do a main backup, Microsoft guides you in steps and will not go to the next step until you finish the first one. For each and every step there is a guideline, and even if you didn't read the tutorial, just you go to the steps and follow the steps.

I didn't raise any requests or get any support from Microsoft but I got other support from Microsoft and raised other support tickets but not for this particular project.

In addition to Azure Backup we used Azure Backup as an off-site backup because we have on-site backup. We also use EMC NetWorker which backups up to a disk. It's backup to disk software which we then do a backup from our local data and local servers to the local backup device. We use Azure because it is off-site backup so it helps us a lot in case of a disaster, in case of any problems so we can still have data be off-site so we can restore it from anywhere.

The initial setup was easy. I did it myself. It is not very complicated at all. This is another one of its valuable features, that it is easy to set up. Microsoft has guidelines, documentation, instructions, procedures, and tutorials available.

Because it's a Microsoft product, admin guidelines and instructions are available. It's not that complicated. You can have any infrastructure on the cloud or on-premise. If you want to install a server you will need to install maybe a virtual machine. But if you don't need to install it, you can install only an agent on the computers. That's it.

The deployment took around two days. I have experience with other backup solutions so I understand the concept. It's like a car. You have a car, you know how to drive a car. But this is Rolls Royce or a Porsche or whatever, but it is the same concept. You can still own the car and you can go. It is the same. So for us, it doesn't take that much time to understand the concept of backup and then implement it. 

The deployment required two people, myself and a colleague. 

It requires three people for maintenance.

From a cost perspective, it is a very good solution because it doesn't need a lot of costs because it's only a matter of storage on the cloud. You don't need any license at all, and on the cloud, you only need bandwidth. Bandwidth utilization will have various calculations of bandwidth utilization or bandwidth utilization and storage.

You don't need a license. There's only a subscription with Azure, that's it. Azure will calculate the bandwidth which you are utilizing and the storage. The worst thing at Azure is software allocations. That is not required, even in Azure, to implement a server or install backup software. From Azure itself, it's a matter of configuration. No need to have infrastructure. You don't need to have a server and install the software in the cloud. It's only a matter of some steps you need to follow. It's only a platform and a service. 

It is easy to configure a solution at any time, from anywhere. I can also restore the data, easily, without any complication. You can implement it in a very short time. The lesson learned in the beginning is that you can implement a solution in a very short time. 

I would rate it a seven out of ten. It has some good features. You can sort the data in many ways and at anytime. But it is not user-friendly. To be frank, it is not a software and a service. Software and service is easier and not complicated but infrastructure is more complicated. A platform lies somewhere in between. It's a platform and service.