Hello everyone!
You probably landed on this video because of your interest
in Azure Databases for PostgreSQL server,
which is a PaaS service for Postgres databases in Azure.
This service offers an in-built backup capability that helps you
retain backups for up to 35 days.
Then why do you need Azure Backup?
Azure Backup is a built-in Azure service that provides
enterprise-class backup features for your various data assets.
In the case of Azure PostgreSQL, it provides capabilities such as -
1. long-term retention for up to 10 years.
2. Customer-controlled database level backup & restores.
3.With use of pg_dump, restores are possible across database versions.
4. Backups are securely stored in a separate fault domain
in Azure backup storage accounts.
5. & all of these actions and monitoring happen centrally from
a single pane of glass called the Backup Center.
Let's look at the demo now.
Log in to the Azure portal and create a Backup Vault.
Think of Backup Vault as a logical construct masking the
actual backup storage accounts where your backups will be stored.
Fill in the details and select the appropriate storage redundancy.
Currently, you can choose between locally-redundant and geo-redundant.
Hit 'Review+Create' and that's it!
The vault will be created in a few minutes.
While that happens, let's switch to an already existing vault.
You can either go to the Backup vault list from the search bar as shown earlier
or instead, go to the Backup Center, which is the single pane of glass
for all things back-up related. The backup center aggregates and
shows data across vaults, subscriptions, locations as well as tenants.
From the vaults list, choose the Backup vault which you want to backup your
Postgres databases to. Click on '+Backup' to configure protection
on Postgres databases. Next, create a new Backup Policy.
At present, only 'Weekly' backup frequency is supported.
However, you can choose to trigger backup on multiple days in a week
under this option. Next, specify the retention settings.
You can define multiple retention rules.
For example, the default retention for all backups could be set to say, 4 weeks.
However, should you choose to retain few backups for a different duration,
add a new retention rule. So here, I would retain the first successful backup
of the month for 2 months in hot tier and 24 months in the archive tier.
Select the appropriate tiering option to move data across the 2 tiers.
Once the policy is created, move on to select the Postgres databases
you want to protect. This blade will list all Postgres servers in the user's context,
across subscriptions and resource groups.
You can select multiple databases across multiple Azure PostgreSQL servers.
At this point, the service validates whether it has appropriate permissions
to back up the Postgres databases so selected.
Please note, Azure Backup does not ask for or store your credentials.
We connect to the database using Azure Active Directory-based authentication.
Refer to the link in the infobox to set up the AAD based authentication
for the validations to succeed. Review the details and hit 'Configure Backup'.
Configure Backup operation will now be triggered for all the selected
databases and its status is tracked under Backup Instances.
Once protection is successfully configured, backups will be
triggered as per the schedule. Drill down to one of the backup instances.
Since my initial scheduled backup is still pending,
I can trigger an on-demand backup on this database.
Choose from the available retention rules associated with the policy.
Once you have one or more recovery points, you can trigger Restore.
Select from the list of available recovery points. I just have one here.
Define where and how to restore. You can 'Restore as files' in which
the backup is dumped to a target blob storage account. Alternatively,
you can 'Restore as database' to a target Azure Postgres server.
Again, validation is triggered to check if the service has appropriate access on
the target server or storage account.
You can track all backup and restore operations either under
the Backup Vault or at an aggregate level under the Backup Center.
That's all for the demo. Hope you found this video useful!