Microsoft Azure says it is adding native backup for SQL Server 2019 running in Azure Virtual Machine; a new offering that protects standalone SQL Server and SQL AlwaysOn configurations running in the cloud, without the need to deploy and manage any additional backup infrastructure.
The move comes as cloud providers continue to ramp up their back-up offerings; aiming to cut into the market share of dedicated back-up and resilience specialists, many of which have been feeling the pressure from such cloud-native offerings (witness, e.g, Sungard’s travails).
Read this: IT Teams “Dangerously Misinformed” About Cloud Backup Provisions
Azure Backup programme manager Swati Sachdeva noted: “… a centrally managed, enterprise-scale backup solution is imperative… This is especially true if you are running the SQL Server in the cloud to leverage the benefits of dynamic scale and don’t want to continue using the legacy backup methods that are tedious, infrastructure-heavy, and difficult to scale.”
Azure is also sharing Azure Backup general availability SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 migrating to Azure as SQL Server running in virtual machines, and SQL Server running on Windows 2019.
(As recently reported by Computer Business Review, enterprises typically widely misunderstand their cloud service providers’ backup provisions, according to research by 4sl; most believing that their cloud service providers retain backup data for much longer than they actually do).
SQL Server Back-Up
Among Azure’s new enhancements for its back-up services is the key capability of Restore as Files, which lets users restore anywhere by recovering the backed-up data as .bak files, Sachdeva noted.
These backup files can be moved across subscriptions, regions, or onto on-premises SQL Servers and trigger database restore wherever users want, Azure promised, helping users stay compliant by letting them recover backup data from a destination of their choice. 
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The move comes as Microsoft continues to aggressively target SQL database customers looking to move their databases (whether Oracle’s, Microsoft’s, or any other supplier) onto the cloud as growing numbers of enterprise SQL database users start to consider their options for migration or replacement.
A recent survey found that 44 percent of organizations now using SQL Server on VMs in Azure, Amazon and Google Cloud at least some of the time.
