How to Create a Recovery Services vault in Azure

In this azure tutorial, we will discuss How to Create a Recovery Services vault. Apart from this, we will also discuss on the below topics

• Set storage redundancy for the services vault
• How to set cross-region restore for the services vault
• Create a Recovery Services vault using PowerShell
• Comparison between Recovery Services vaults and Backup vaults

Create a Recovery Services vault

A recovery service vault is something that stores the backups and recovery data.

• Azure virtual machine DNS (FQDN)
• Azure virtual machine back up

The data is nothing but copies of data, or configuration information of the virtual machines (VM).

This helps us organizing the backup data.

You can create up to 500 recovery service vault per subscription and per region.

Follow the below steps to create a Recovery Services vault in Azure portal.

Step- 1: 

Login to https://portal.azure.com/

Step- 2:

On the left side menu, click on “All services”.

Step- 3:

Now search for “Recovery Services” Now you will see “Recovery Services vaults”. Click on that.

Step- 4:

It will show the lists of Recovery Services vaults. Click on Add button.

Step- 5:

On the Create Recovery Services vault window, Select the Subscription, Resource group, Give a Vault name, select a region and then click on Review + Create button.

Step- 6:

Now click on the Create button.

Step- 7:

Now it will show that the deployment is completed.

Step- 8:

Now to confirm if it is successfully created, you can see here

You can see above the new Services vaults got created named as “MyNewVault”.

Set storage redundancy for the services vault

You can set the storage replication type between the two

• Geo-redundant
• Locally-redundant

Default is Geo-redundant. If you want you can change it to Locally-redundant.

You can follow the below steps to do so

Step-1:

On the Recovery Services vaults window, click on the new vault you have created. In my case it is MyNewVault.

Step- 2:

Click on properties under Settings section and then click on Update under Backup Configuration.

Step- 3:

On the Backup Configuration window, select the Storage replication type as “Locally-redundant” and then click on the Save button.

Note: It is suggested to use the Geo-redundant(Default) as the Storage replication type.

In this way, you can set the storage redundancy for the services vaults.

How to set cross-region restore for the services vault

Cross-Region Restore (CRR) helps you to restore Azure VMs in a secondary region if there’s a disaster in the primary region.

If you are creating a vault with GRS redundancy include the option to configure the Cross-Region Restore feature and if it is Locally-redundant then you will not get the option for Cross-Region Restore (CRR).

You can follow the below steps to set cross region restore for the services vault.

Step-1:

On the Recovery Services vaults window, click on the new vault you have created. In my case it is MyNewVault.

Step- 2:

Click on properties under Settings section and then click on Update under Backup Configuration.

Step- 3:

On the Backup Configuration window, select the Storage replication type as “Geo-redundant” and then only you can see the Cross-Region Restore option. Select the Enable button there. Finally Click on the Save button.

This is how you can set cross-region restore for the services vault.

Create a Recovery Services vault using PowerShell

We already discussed how can we create a recovery services vault using the Azure portal. Now let’s discuss how we can create the same using PowerShell.

Step-1:

You need to have a resource group where you can place the Recovery Services vault. If you have already an existing one you can use it. If you do not have any resource group then you can create one by using the below line of code.

New-AzResourceGroup -Name "mynewresgroup123" -Location "West US"

Step- 2:

Use the below line of code to create the Services vault and specify the name for vault, specify the resource group, and specify the location. One important point here to make sure the location for the resource group and location for creating the vault should be the same one.

New-AzRecoveryServicesVault -Name "MyNewVault123" -ResourceGroupName "mynewresgroup123" -Location "West US"

Step- 3:

Use the below line of code to specify the type of storage redundancy to use. Here, in my case I am trying to use the storage type as GeoRedundant.

$myVault = Get-AzRecoveryServicesVault -Name "MyNewVault123"
Set-AzRecoveryServicesBackupProperty  -Vault $myVault -BackupStorageRedundancy GeoRedundant

This is how you can create a Recovery Services vault using PowerShell.

Managing your Recovery Services vaults in the Azure portal

As we have already seen that it is very easy to create the Recovery Services vaults and manage the same in the Azure portal. Just a couple of steps need to be followed to create it.

If you wish to see the recovery points for your virtual machine you just need to select your VM and then select the Backup option from the left side menu.

Step-1:

Select your virtual machine and click on the Backup option from the left side menu.

Step- 2:

See below you can able to see the Recovery points and all the other details here.

If your virtual machine doesn’t have backup configured, then it will show you to configure backup.

If it is already configured for your virtual machine then it will show with the backup details with the status.

Here in my case, vault938 is the Recovery services vault created for my virtual machine(VM).

Comparison between Recovery Services vaults and Backup vaults

There are many differences between Backup vaults and Recovery Services vaults in Azure.

Backup vaults	Recovery Services vaults
Backup vaults are the older versions.	Recovery Services vaults are the current version.
This is based on the Azure Service Manager model.	This is based on the Azure Resource Manager model of Azure.
These features are not available with Backup vaults.	Recovery Services vaults provides many latest features: 1- Enhanced capabilities to help secure backup data 2- Central monitoring for your hybrid IT environment 3- Instant restore for IaaS VMs

You may like following Azure tutorials:

• Connect to Azure in PowerShell (And Azure AD)
• How to create a user in Azure active directory
• How to add bulk guest users in Azure AD B2B from Azure Portal and PowerShell
• What is Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration (Azure AD B2B)
• How to reset password in Azure virtual machine
• How to enable Azure virtual machine encryption
• How to Create a Recovery Services vault in Azure
• The ‘New-AzResourceGroup’ command was found in the module ‘Az.Resources’, but the module could not be loaded

Conclusion

In this Azure tutorial, We discussed

• Create a Recovery Services vault
• Set storage redundancy for the services vault
• How to set cross-region restore for the services vault
• Create a Recovery Services vault using PowerShell
• Comparison between Recovery Services vaults and Backup vaults