Backing Up Azure VMs On Demand

You can perform on-demand backups for a single VM or for all the VMs in a VM group.

Considerations

If your VMs are encryped with Azure Key Vault, consider the following:

• If your VMs are encryped with Azure Key Vault, then your Azure Key Vault and VMs must reside in the same Azure region and subscription.

• You cannot run a backup for a Linux guest VM that has only the operating system disk encrypted (using Azure Key Vault). However, if this type of guest VM is included in a backup job, the job does not fail but completes with errors (identifying the VM that is not backed up).

• If you have set restricted network access on your managed Azure VM disks, before performing backups, set the bAzureAllowJITPublicAccess additional setting to true.

  For more information, see the KB article 89316.

  • You can instantly restore VMs and disks that use Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disks—even while the background snapshot copy is still in progress—by adding the bAzureEnableInstantAccessSnapshots additional setting on the VM group.

  For information about how instant access snapshots use the usage-based billing model, go to Billing of instant access snapshot of Ultra Disks and Premium SSD v2 disk on the Microsoft documentation website.

Procedure

1. From the Command Center navigation pane, go to Protect > Virtual machines.

   The Overview page appears.

2. Go to the VM or VM group that you want to back up:

   • To back up a VM, on the Virtual machines tab, in the row for the VM, click the action button , and then select Back up.

   • To back up all the VMs in a VM group, on the VM groups tab, in the row for the VM group, click the action button , and then select Back up.

   The Backup options dialog box appears.

3. For Backup type, select the type of backup to perform.

4. If you are backing up a single VM, for Retention, to specify a custom retention period for the backup, do the following:

   By default, the retention period is inherited from the backup plan. The Retention setting is not available for VM groups.

   1. Click the edit button .

      The Edit retention settings dialog box appears.

   2. Select Retention period, and then specify the amount of time to retain the backup for.

   3. Click Save.

5. Click Submit to start the backup.