Operating Azure Backup at Scale: Day‑2 Excellence for IaaS, PaaS, and Storage Workloads

How do you protect business-critical workloads across VMs, databases, containers, and storage without stitching together one-off tools? In this session from the Azure Info Summit, Bhavya and Shobit, Product Managers on the Azure Resiliency team, walk through how Azure is reimagining business continuity as a unified resiliency experience that spans IaaS, cloud native, and storage architectures.
You will learn how Azure Resiliency is structured across three pillars - infrastructure resiliency, data resiliency, and cyber recovery - and how the new resiliency portal pulls together Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Chaos Studio, and Azure Copilot into a single, application-centric experience. The session uses a Contoso scenario to show how a cloud architect configures backup policies, enables agentless crash-consistent backup for Linux VMs, protects SQL in Azure VMs with 15-minute RPO, and hardens vaults with immutability, soft delete, and multi-user authorization.
Key topics covered include snapshot, vault, and archive tier backups; database-aware protection for SQL, HANA, and Sybase; the new threat detection preview that scans restore points for malware using Defender for Cloud; Azure Backup for AKS with granular restores and immutable recovery points; vaulted backups for PostgreSQL flexible server; configuring backup directly from VS Code via the Azure MCP server; vault-based protection for unstructured storage; and the resiliency agent that uses Azure Copilot to assess gaps, enable Azure Site Recovery on top of Azure Backup, and enforce ransomware defenses.

## Speakers
Bhavya Tadikonda — Product Manager, Azure Resiliency, Microsoft
Shobhit Garg — Product Manager, Azure Resiliency, Microsoft

## Key Takeaways
- Azure Resiliency is built on three pillars - infrastructure resiliency, data resiliency, and cyber recovery - surfaced through a unified, application-centric portal with Azure Copilot guidance.
- Azure Backup delivers full-stack protection for IaaS, including snapshot tier for instant recovery, vault and archive tiers for long-term retention, agentless crash-consistent backup for Linux, and database-aware protection for SQL, HANA, and Sybase with RPO as low as 15 minutes.
- Cyber resilience is hardened at the vault layer through built-in immutability, soft delete, and multi-user authorization, plus a new threat detection preview that uses Microsoft Defender for Cloud to scan restore points and flag them as healthy or suspicious before recovery.
- For cloud native workloads, Azure Backup for AKS protects clusters, persistent volumes, and namespaces with automated scheduled backups, granular restores, and immutable recovery points, while Azure Backup for PostgreSQL flexible server adds vaulted long-term retention.
- Backup can be configured beyond the portal: the Azure MCP server in VS Code lets engineers list unprotected AKS clusters and configure protection through natural language prompts that reuse existing vaults and policies.
- The resiliency agent, powered by Azure Copilot, continuously assesses resiliency gaps, automates remediation such as enabling Azure Site Recovery on top of Azure Backup, and orchestrates RTO and RPO goals so workloads stay protected, compliant, and recoverable.

## Resources
- Azure Backup documentation — https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/backup — Official docs for configuring vaults, policies, and workload protection across Azure.
- Azure Site Recovery documentation — https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/site-recovery — Guidance for enabling disaster recovery and replication on top of Azure Backup.
- Back up an Azure Kubernetes Service cluster — https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/backup/backup-azure-kubernetes-service-cluster — Step-by-step instructions for protecting AKS clusters, namespaces, and persistent volumes.
- Azure Backup for PostgreSQL flexible server — https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/backup/backup-azure-database-postgresql — Configure vaulted long-term retention for PostgreSQL flexible server databases.
- Azure Backup product page — https://azure.microsoft.com/products/backup — Overview of pricing, features, and getting started with Azure Backup.

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