Protecting data in Microsoft Azure Archive for long-term retention
To protect your data for long-term retention you can back up the data to Microsoft Azure Archive Blob storage using NetBackup. Using NetBackup, you can create a storage server with Archive storage tier.
Note:
The Archive storage tier is only available at the blob level and not at the storage account level.
Ensure that the following requirements are fulfilled:
You must have a general-purpose storage V2 to use Azure Archive.
Account level tier must be configured to HOT, else backup fails.
Consider the following limitations:
Accelerator and deduplication are not supported with Azure Archive.
If restore or cleanup fails, you need to manually set the tier to archive for corresponding blobs.
Configure the Azure Archive cloud storage server.
Create a disk pool with Microsoft Azure Container.
Storage unit is created using the disk pool.
Verify if the AZR:STORAGE_TIER property is configured for the storage server.
Note:
Once storage server is configured, its STORAGE_TIER cannot be changed.
Use the STU in the backup policy or the service lifecycle policy.
During backup, NetBackup first uploads data to HOT Tier and after the data is successfully uploaded, it is moved to the Archive Tier.
The following diagram illustrates the backup flow.
During restore, first image fragments are moved from Archive Tier to HOT tier. Movement of image fragments takes around 3 hrs to 15 hrs. After the image fragments are available in HOT Tier, they are downloaded to local storage. After the restore is complete, the image fragments on the HOT tier are moved back to the Archive Tier.
Note:
Image import from Azure Archive storage with TIR is faster.
The following diagram illustrates the restore flow.
