Tutorial: Back up an Azure Extended Zone virtual machine

You can protect your data by taking backups at regular intervals. Azure Backup creates recovery points that can be stored in geo-redundant recovery vaults. In this article, you learn how to back up an existing virtual machine (VM) using the Azure portal.

In this tutorial, you learn how to:

  • Create a Recovery Services vault.
  • Apply a backup policy to an Extended Zone VM.

Prerequisites

Create a Recovery Services vault

A Recovery Services vault is a management entity that stores recovery points that are created over time, and it provides an interface to perform backup-related operations. These operations include taking on-demand backups, performing restores, and creating backup policies. In this section, you create a Recovery Services vault.

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal.

  2. In the search box at the top of the portal, enter backup. Select Backup center from the search results.

    Screenshot that shows how to search for Backup center in the Azure portal.

  3. On the Overview page, select + Vault.

    Screenshot that shows how to create a vault from the Backup center in the Azure portal.

  4. On the Start: Create Vault page, select Recovery Services vault and then select Continue.

    Screenshot that shows how to create a Recovery Services vault in the Azure portal.

  5. On the Basics tab of Create Recovery Services vault, enter or select the following information:

    Setting Value
    Project Details
    Subscription Select your Azure subscription.
    Resource group Select Create new.
    Enter myResourceGroup in Name.
    Select OK.
    Instance Details
    Vault name Enter myVault.
    Region Select West US. Recovery Services vault can only be created in an Azure region and not in an Azure Extended Zone.

    Screenshot that shows the Basics tab of creating a Recovery Services vault in the Azure portal.

  6. Select Review + create.

  7. Review the settings, and then select Create.

Apply a backup policy

  1. On the Overview page of Backup center, select + Backup.

    Screenshot that shows how to create a backup from the Backup center in the Azure portal.

  2. On Start: Configure Backup page, select the following information:

    Setting Value
    Datasource type
    Datasource type Select Azure virtual machines.
    Vault Select myVault. You'll use this Recovery Services vault to store your VM backups.

    Screenshot that shows how to select the Recovery Services vault.

  3. Select Continue.

  4. On Configure backup page, select Enhanced to choose the Enhanced policy, then select Add to add the virtual machines that you want to backup using this policy.

    Screenshot that shows how to add virtual machines to the backup policy.

  5. Select Enable backup.

Clean up resources

When no longer needed, delete the resource group and the resources it contains:

  1. In the search box at the top of the portal, enter myResourceGroup. Select myResourceGroup from the search results.

  2. Select Delete resource group.

  3. In Delete a resource group, enter myResourceGroup, and then select Delete.

  4. Select Delete to confirm the deletion of the resource group and all its resources.