Azure Snapshots vs Azure Backup vs Azure Site Recovery vs Azure Restore Points

Some key data protection and disaster recovery services in Azure. Here's a breakdown of the differences between Azure Snapshots, Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery, and Azure Restore Points:

1. Azure Snapshots

• What it is: A point-in-time copy of a disk.¹ It's like taking a picture of your disk at a specific moment.
• Benefits:
  • Fast creation: Snapshots are created quickly, making them ideal for frequent backups or creating a baseline before making changes.
  • Fast restore: Restoring from a snapshot is also very fast, as the data is readily available.²
  • Cost-effective: Snapshots are relatively inexpensive.
• How it's different:
  • Not a full backup solution: Snapshots only capture the disk; they don't include VM configurations or other settings.
  • Limited retention: Snapshots are typically stored for a shorter period.
  • Within the same region: Snapshots are stored in the same region as the original disk.

2. Azure Backup

• What it is: A service for backing up data from various sources, including Azure VMs, on-premises servers, and applications.³
• Benefits:
  • Comprehensive protection: Backs up the entire VM, including disks, configurations, and extensions.⁴
  • Long-term retention: Offers flexible retention policies for storing backups for months or years.⁵
  • Centralized management: Provides a central console to manage backups for all your resources.⁶
  • Cost-effective for long-term storage: Designed for storing backups over extended periods.⁷
  • **Cross
  • Slower restore times: Restoring from a backup can take longer than restoring from a snapshot, as the data might need to be retrieved from storage.
  • More expensive than snapshots: Backup storage costs are generally higher than snapshot storage.

3. Azure Site Recovery

• What it is: A disaster recovery service that replicates workloads to a secondary location (another Azure region or on-premises).⁸
• Benefits:
  • Business continuity: Enables quick failover to the secondary location in case of a disaster.⁹
  • Minimal downtime: Helps maintain business operations with minimal disruption.¹⁰
  • Application consistency: Offers features to ensure application-consistent replication.¹¹
  • Automated failover and failback: Simplifies disaster recovery orchestration.
• How it's different:
  • Not a backup solution: Site Recovery focuses on replicating entire workloads for disaster recovery, not individual file recovery.
  • Continuous replication: Replicates data continuously or near-continuously, resulting in lower RPOs (Recovery Point Objectives).¹²
  • More expensive: Site Recovery is typically more expensive than backups, but it provides a higher level of protection for critical workloads.¹³

4. Azure Restore Points

• What it is: A type of recovery point created by Azure Backup. It represents a specific point in time when the backup was taken.
• Benefits:
• Granular recovery: Allows you to restore individual files or folders from a restore point.¹⁴
• Full VM recovery: Enables restoring the entire VM to the state it was in at
• Part of Azure Backup: Restore points are an integral part of the Azure Backup service.¹⁵
• Stored in the Recovery Services Vault: Restore points are stored in a Recovery Services Vault, which is a secure storage location for backups.¹⁶

• What is VM restore point?

A VM restore point stores the VM configuration and point-in-time crash or application consistent snapshot for all managed disks attached to a Virtual Machine. VM RestorePointCollection is the ARM resource which contains the restore points specific to a VM and each restore point contains disk restore points for each included disk. The resource hierarchy hence looks like this:

 

VM Restore Points Collection

  |

  -- VM Restore Points (application or crash consistent across disks at a point in time)

         |

         -- Disk Restore Points (one for each disk included in the VM restore point)

You can create individual disks from the Disk restore point objects and then attach these disk to a new VM. VM restore points are incremental where the first restore point stores a full copy of all the disk attached to the VM. For each successive restore point for a VM, only the incremental changes to your disks are backed up. To further reduce your cost, you can optionally exclude any disk when creating a restore point for your VM. You can also perform all operations supported on snapshots, such as copy, and delete on individual disk snapshot within a VM restore point.

• What is the difference between crash and application consistent snapshot?

Application consistent snapshot uses an agent running in the VM to capture memory content and pending I/O operations. App-consistent snapshots uses a VSS writer (or pre/post scripts for Linux) to ensure the consistency of the app data before a capture occurs.

 

For crash consistent snapshot, only the data that exists on the disk at the time of backup is captured and backed up. No agent is needed to be running on the VM and hence does not impact the VM’s performance. Crash consistent snapshots can also be taken at a higher frequency compared to application consistent snapshots.

Here's a table summarizing the key differences:

Feature	Azure Snapshots	Azure Backup	Azure Site Recovery	Azure Restore Points
Purpose	Quick disk copies	Data protection	Disaster recovery	Recovery from backups
Scope	Disk only	Entire VM	Entire workload	Data within a backup
Retention	Limited	Long-term	N/A	Based on backup policy
Restore Speed	Fast	Slower	Failover to secondary site	Variable
Cost	Low	Higher than snapshots	Highest	Part of Azure Backup cost
Use Case	Frequent backups, quick restore	Long-term data protection	Business continuity, disaster recovery	Granular or full VM recovery

In a nutshell:

• Use snapshots for quick, frequent copies of disks, especially for development or testing purposes.¹⁷
• Use Azure Backup for comprehensive VM backups and long-term data retention.
• Use Azure Site Recovery for replicating workloads and ensuring business continuity in case of a disaster.¹⁸
• Use restore points (within Azure Backup) to restore specific data or the entire VM from a backup.¹⁹
• ^{======================================================================================}

🔹 Difference Between Azure Snapshot, Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery, and Azure Restore Points

Azure provides multiple data protection and disaster recovery solutions. Each serves a different purpose based on use case, retention policy, and recovery objectives. Let’s compare Azure Snapshot, Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery (ASR), and Azure Restore Points in detail.

---

🔹 1. Azure Snapshot 🖼️

✅ Definition

Azure Snapshot is a point-in-time backup of a disk (OS or data disk). It is stored in Azure Storage and can be used to restore disks in case of failures.

✅ Key Benefits & Use Cases

✔️ Fast restore of a single disk without affecting the entire VM.
✔️ Useful for temporary backups before critical updates.
✔️ Supports incremental snapshots (cost-efficient).
✔️ Ideal for manual disk backup and recovery.

✅ How It Differs?

• Not application-consistent (only disk-level consistency).
• Not suitable for long-term retention.
• No automatic scheduling (requires manual or scripted automation).

✅ Command to Create a Snapshot (CLI)

az snapshot create --resource-group MyResourceGroup --source MyManagedDisk --name MySnapshot --location eastus

---

🔹 2. Azure Backup 💾

✅ Definition

Azure Backup is a managed backup service designed for VMs, databases, files, and workloads. It offers automated backup scheduling, long-term retention, and centralized management.

✅ Key Benefits & Use Cases

✔️ Application-aware backups (for SQL, SAP HANA, etc.).
✔️ Long-term retention (months to years).
✔️ Automated backup policies (daily, weekly, monthly).
✔️ Cross-region backup storage for disaster recovery.

✅ How It Differs?

• More suitable for long-term retention than snapshots.
• Supports full VM recovery (not just disks).
• Data is compressed & encrypted to reduce storage costs.
• Slower restore times compared to snapshots.

✅ Command to Enable VM Backup (CLI)

az backup protection enable-for-vm --resource-group MyResourceGroup --vault-name MyBackupVault --vm MyVM --policy-name MyBackupPolicy

---

🔹 3. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) 🌍

✅ Definition

Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is a disaster recovery (DR) solution that replicates VMs, on-prem servers, and workloads to another Azure region or on-premises site. It helps ensure business continuity in case of failures.

✅ Key Benefits & Use Cases

✔️ Real-time VM replication (as low as 30s RPO).
✔️ Automated failover & failback for business continuity.
✔️ Cross-region DR (e.g., replicate from East US to West US).
✔️ Supports on-prem to Azure migration (Hyper-V, VMware, Physical Servers).

✅ How It Differs?

• Designed for disaster recovery (not regular backups).
• Expensive compared to snapshots or backups.
• Supports multi-region failover, whereas Azure Backup doesn’t.

✅ Command to Enable ASR Replication (CLI)

az site-recovery replication-protected-item create --resource-group MyResourceGroup --vault-name MyRecoveryVault --fabric-name MyFabric --protection-container-name MyContainer --name MyVM

---

🔹 4. Azure Restore Points 🔄

✅ Definition

Azure Restore Points allow users to create consistent backups of Azure VMs and restore them when needed. These are typically used for quick restores before changes.

✅ Key Benefits & Use Cases

✔️ Application-consistent restore points.
✔️ Faster restore time than snapshots or backup.
✔️ Automatic scheduling available.
✔️ Good for temporary recovery before patching/upgrades.

✅ How It Differs?

• More consistent than snapshots.
• Short-term retention only.
• Does not provide disaster recovery like ASR.

✅ Command to Create a Restore Point (CLI)

az restore-point create --resource-group MyResourceGroup --vault-name MyRestoreVault --vm MyVM

---

🔹 Comparison Table of Azure Snapshot, Backup, ASR, and Restore Points

Feature	Azure Snapshot 🖼️	Azure Backup 💾	Azure Site Recovery (ASR) 🌍	Azure Restore Points 🔄
Purpose	Disk-level backup	Full VM & app backup	Disaster recovery (DR)	Quick restore of VM state
Retention	Short-term	Long-term (months/years)	Continuous replication	Short-term
Use Case	Fast disk recovery	Compliance, scheduled backups	DR failover/failback	Temporary protection before changes
Consistency	Crash-consistent	Application-consistent	Near real-time replication	Application-consistent
Automation	Manual	Automatic	Automatic	Automatic
Cross-Region	❌ No	✅ Yes (Geo-Redundant)	✅ Yes	❌ No
Failover Support	❌ No	❌ No	✅ Yes	❌ No
Recovery Speed	Fast	Medium	Fastest	Fast
Best For	Quick disk recovery	Scheduled backups	Disaster recovery	Temporary restore before updates

---

🔹 Which One Should You Choose?

• Need a quick disk-level backup? → Azure Snapshot
• Want automated, long-term backups? → Azure Backup
• Need disaster recovery with failover? → Azure Site Recovery (ASR)
• Want to quickly restore a VM before patching? → Azure Restore Points

---

🚀 Final Takeaways

✔ Snapshots are good for quick disk backup but lack long-term retention.
✔ Azure Backup is best for full VM & workload backup with long-term retention.
✔ ASR is for real-time DR failover between regions or on-prem & Azure.
✔ Restore Points are useful for fast, temporary recovery before critical changes.