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Windows Azure - What is backed up automatically? and what do I need to backup manually?

This is my architecture at the moment:

  • SQL Azure Database to store relational data.
  • Azure Blobs to store images and videos.
  • Azure Web Role to host WCF services (Available internally and as an external API)
  • Azure Web role to host a web application.

Little bit lost on what I need to manually backup? Can someone point me in the right direction?

Any links would be greatly appreciated to on backup / disaster recovery.

Solution

  • SQL Azure Database to store relational data.

    SQL Azure Databases are backed up by default. To learn more about it, you may find this link useful: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/jj650016.aspx.

    Azure Blobs to store images and videos.

    Azure blobs are not backed up by default. They are replicated 3 times in the same region and you can enable geo-replication and then the contents of the blob are replicated to a storage account in another region which is at least 400 miles away but in the same geographical region (e.g. US East Storage account would get replicated to US West region). BUT replication is not backup! To backup, you could simply use tools like AzCopy to manually copy contents of your storage account to another storage account for backup purposes.

    Web/Worker Roles

    Since web/worker role are deployed as packages and the packages are first uploaded into blob storage, you can make use of same backup mechanism that you would use to backup your blob storage contents. If you want to get a copy of the package/config file, you can use Get Package functionality.