What You Should Know about Azure Backup Pricing

Azure Backup has emerged as one of the most prominent cloud-based backup solutions out there. Offered by Microsoft, Azure Backup is an excellent cloud backup service that can help businesses effectively manage and store their data in Microsoft’s data centers. It is super secure, budget-friendly, and reliable.

The best thing about Azure Backup is that it is incredibly easy to use and understand. You do not have to be a tech wizard to make sense of this service. Moreover, since all of your data will be stored in the Microsoft Cloud, you don’t have to worry about it getting stolen or damaged.

The Azure Security Center offers a robust three-fold method of detection, prevention, and response to prevent data theft and other cyber crimes. Storage costs, backup policies, and coverage for all individual files, are competitive and top-notch. This ensures security and business continuity for you and your business. 

If you are looking for a reliable backup solution for your business, Azure Backup is worth considering. It offers several plans and pricing models you can choose, according to your business’s requirements.

However, making sense of these plans can be a little confusing if you have no idea what you’re looking for. But don’t worry because we have you covered! This blog post will walk you through all the major pricing options (storage pricing/price per month/and other important factors that affect your monthly cost) of Azure Backup along with their major features. Read on!

Factors Affecting the Pricing Models of Azure Backup

Azure Backup offers a huge range of pricing models to meet the needs of different customers. Each of its plans comes with different features and offers different storage limits. Before we discuss pricing models, let’s understand the factors that will affect your overall backup costs on Microsoft Azure.

The Fixed Cost

Azure Backup comes with a fixed cost that every customer has to pay regardless of the services they use or the data and storage they consume. This cost doesn’t depend on anything, and you’ll have to pay for it each time you want to backup your data.

The Bandwidth Used for Transferring Data

The amount of bandwidth you use to transfer your data also affects the cost of your plan. The higher the amount of bandwidth consumed during backups, the higher will be your cost.

Amount of Storage You Consume

Finally, the amount of storage space your data actually consumes also affects the price you’ll have to pay for Azure Backup (available storage tiers). Your storage space will depend on factors like your backup size, how often you back up your files, documents, and other data on Microsoft Azure, and the number of historical copies you want to retain.

Customers can choose to store their backups in Locally Redundant Storage (LRS) or Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS).

While LRS is more budget-friendly, it offers limited features. With LRS, you can duplicate your data only in a specific region. On the other hand, GRS is more expensive. Still, it offers more robust disaster recovery solutions and allows you to duplicate your data across various regions.

How Does Azure Backup Pricing Work?

Now that we have talked about the primary factors that will affect the final cost of your Azure Backup plan, let’s understand how Azure Backup pricing actually works. The Azure Backup pricing has two fixed components, including Protected Instances and Backup Storage. Both components play a crucial role in deciding your final cost and the features, storage space, and backup speed that you’ll finally receive.

Now, let’s look at what these components actually are and how they work.

Protected Instances

This is basically the management fee that helps you enable and manage data movement, discovery configuration, Azure’s auto protection policies, etc. The exact cost of protected instances will depend upon the type and size of workloads you want to store and protect. Protected instances apply to all the workloads where your data needs to be moved to Azure’s Recovery Services vault.

Azure keeps on revising its pricing policies for protected instances. Currently, for data like Azure Files, there’s an operational tier to help you in configuring and managing your files. It is also known as snapshot management and you’ll have to pay a flat fee for it. In short, there’s a fixed charge for all virtual machines (VMs) you’re backing up.

On the other hand, for new workloads like blobs and disks, you can configure and manage the operational tier backups without paying any flat fee. It is free of cost. You’ll only have to pay for the snapshots that are actually used as a part of the backups.

Here is the rundown of the current fixed prices for protected instances:

Backup Storage

The backup storage has two tiers: the standard tier and the archive tier. The standard tier allows you to choose the option where you want your backed-up data to be available. It is set to Geo-Redundant Storage by default but you can change it as per your requirements.

The backup storage follows a simple pay-as-you-go policy where you have to pay the cost per GB for storing your data. The cost per GB is decided by Microsoft Azure and is revised from time to time.

Here is a quick rundown of the current backup storage pricing for both standard and archive tiers:

Points to Remember

If you are looking for a budget-friendly backup solution, going for the archive tier can be an excellent choice. It will help you save some significant bucks in the long run.

Remember that any data you shift to the archive tier will be deleted within 180 days, as per the Archive early deletion policy. If you delete any recovery points that didn’t stay in the archive tier for a minimum period of 180 days, you’ll have to pay the early deletion costs.

Furthermore, you don’t have to pay any charges for restoring data from the standard tier. It is completely free of cost. But when you restore data from the archive tier, you’ll have to pay a onetime data retrieval fee.

Overall, the standard tier can be the ideal choice for businesses that want to escape deletion compliances and data rhetorical charges. But if you are looking for a more budget-friendly option, and you don’t mind some additional charges, then the archive tier will make more sense to you.

Make sure to list your requirements and go through each pricing option to ensure that you get the best bang for your buck.

Wrapping Up

Simply put, Azure is one of the most reliable and secure cloud storage services that can help you cost-effectively protect your business’s data. One of the best things about Azure Backup is that there are no additional or hidden costs you’ll have to pay. You only pay for the services and the backup storage you choose and you have the option of changing them anytime you need.

If you are looking for an excellent and trusted backup solution for your business, Azure Backup can be a great choice. For further information and more specific pricing-related details, talk to a Microsoft sales specialist directly. You can purchase your Azure backup plan either through an Azure partner or directly from Azure’s website.

Tech Masters helps business owners increase productivity and maximize their resources by providing top-notch solutions for cybersecurity, data backup, and full IT support. Contact us today to learn more and get ready to be amazed when you try our incredible 3-Month Free Service Trial. 

To learn more about Azure data backup, check out our frequently asked questions below. 

FAQ

What are the benefits of Azure Backup?

Azure Backup is one of the most popular and trusted cloud-backup solutions offered by Microsoft Azure. Here are some of the major benefits of Azure Backup:

• Unlimited data transfer
• Excellent security against cyber threats
• Super simple to deploy and use
• Flexible subscription-based pricing
• High scalability

Is Azure Backup good?

Yes, if you are looking for a reliable and secure cloud backup option for your business, Azure Backup can be an excellent choice. Features like unlimited data transfer, real-time scaling of server resources, robust security, and great Microsoft service and support have made Azure Backup one of the most popular cloud backup choices today.

What is the difference between Azure Backup and site recovery?

Azure backup is Microsoft Azure’s cloud backup service that allows you to back up and store your files, records, databases, and more in the safe and reliable Microsoft Cloud. On the other hand, Azure Site Recovery is a comprehensive disaster recovery solution for physical or on-premise servers.

Depending on what you choose, you’ll have layers of coverage for just about any need or scenario which protects premises workloads, file servers, backup servers, primary locations, secondary locations. You can set your frequency and backup levels with daily backups, a streamlined backup process, and a comprehensive backup strategy that everyone can adopt.