Creating a Plan for Configuring Azure Managed Instance Backups

The server plan defines how often the software backs up the database and the log files, and where it stores the backups.

If you already have a server plan that you can use, you can skip this step.

Before You Begin

To create a server plan, you must have the Plan Creator Role assigned to your user account.

Procedure

1. On the Select a Plan page, click the Add button +.

   The General page appears.

2. Select Create a new plan.

3. In the Plan name, enter a name for the server plan.

4. Click Next.

   The Backup Destinations page appears.

5. Click Add copy.

   The Add copy dialog box appears.

6. In the Name box, enter a name for the backup destination.

7. From the Storage list, select the storage to use for the backups.

   You can use the Air Gap Protect cool storage class for creating secondary copies, but not for creating primary copies.

8. From the Backups to copy list, select the type of full backups that you want to back up. Specify a date when you want to start copying the backup types.

9. Under Retention rules, to specify retention period, enter the amount of time to retain the backups.

10. To specify additional backups, such as weekly full backups, move the Extended Retention rules toggle key to the right, and then add rules.

11. Click Save.

12. To add additional regions to the backup destination, move the Multi-region toggle key to the right, and then select the regions.

    You can also add more regions and associate the storage copy to the region.

13. Click Next.

    The RPO page appears.

14. For Backup frequency, click Add.

    The Add backup frequency dialog box appears.

15. From the Backup type list, select the backup type, and from the for list, select All agents or Databases.

16. Specify the frequency of the backup.

17. To specify the client time zone, full backup database frequency, or to add exceptions, move the Advanced toggle key to the right, and do the following:

    1. If you select incremental or differential backup type for all agents or databases, to modify the full backup frequency of the database, specify a value for Run full backup on databases every option.

    2. From the time zone list, select the time zone according to which the backups must run.

       Note

       For subclients that do not support differential backup types, any incremental and differential schedules that are created or modified to run less than 1 day will result in certain subclients to convert to a full backup at the frequency selected.

       This applies to the following subclient types: Azure SQL, Analysis Services, Snap backups, and subclients with the Optimize for table level restore option enabled.

    3. To add exceptions when the backups must not run, click Exceptions, and then add exceptions for any day of a month or week or schedule an exception for any week of the month.

       Exceptions repeat every week or month according to the selected exception.

18. To modify the transaction log frequency, or enable disk cache for log backups, in the Run transaction log for databases field, click Edit .

    1. Specify how often to run log backups.

    2. To run transaction log backups earlier based on threshold limits, move the Enable automatic disk utilization rules toggle key to the right and do the following:

       1. In the Disk space box, enter the threshold percentage for disk space.

       2. In the Log files count box, enter the threshold for the count of log files.

       3. To automatically back up the database logs to the MediaAgent cache, move the Use disk cache for log backups toggle key to the right.

       Note

       The database schedules are available only if the server plan is applicable to database solution and only one transaction log schedule can be added to that specific plan.

19. For Backup window (if incremental and differential backups are supported for the workload), specify when you want incremental and differential backups to run.

20. For Full backup window, specify when you want full backups to run.

21. Click Next.

    The Options page appears.

22. Specify how to retain snapshots:

    • To specify a retention period, select Retention period, and then enter the amount of time to retain the jobs.

    • To specify a number of jobs to retain on a snapshot copy, select Number of snap recovery points, and then enter the number of jobs to retain.

23. If you don't want to create backup copies, move the Enable backup copy toggle key to the left to turn it off.

24. For Backup copy RPO, enter how often to run backup copy jobs.

25. Click Save.