Episode #281
Introduction
In episode 281 of our SAP on Azure video podcast we talk about Azure resiliency with Azure Backup for SAP.
Running an SAP System on Azure is one thing. But what about resiliency. For a long time Microsoft has been offering Azure backup for SAP workload and we have not only been supporting HANA, but also ASE. To share more on the latest inovation on Azure Backup for SAP, I am glad to have Anam with us today.
Find all the links mentioned here: https://www.saponazurepodcast.de/episode281
Reach out to us for any feedback / questions:
- Goran Condric: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gorancondric/
- Holger Bruchelt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/holger-bruchelt/
#Microsoft #SAP #Azure #SAPonAzure #Backup #Security
Summary created by AI
- Azure Resilience Vision and Strategy:
- Anam, Senior Product Manager with the Azure Backup Team, outlined Microsoft’s evolving vision for Azure Resilience, describing the transition from Azure Backup to a broader, integrated resiliency platform and highlighting its application across SAP and other workloads, with Holger providing context and follow-up questions.
- Introduction to Azure Resilience: Anam explained that Azure Backup is being rebranded and expanded as Azure Resilience, aiming to provide a comprehensive, centralized experience for managing resiliency across all Azure workloads, not just SAP. The new platform consolidates backup, disaster recovery, and other resiliency features into a single pane, allowing users to set, monitor, and maintain resiliency goals for their entire application estate.
- Multi-Layered Resiliency Approach: Anam described the three pillars of Azure Resilience: cyber recovery, data resiliency, and infrastructure resiliency. Each pillar consolidates relevant services and features, such as backup, monitoring, service health, and security, to ensure applications remain resilient to failures, cyber threats, and operational drifts.
- Platform-Wide Applicability: Holger emphasized that Azure Resilience is not limited to SAP workloads but is an Azure-wide initiative, with SAP as one of the many beneficiaries. Anam confirmed this, noting that the platform is designed to support all components and services protected within Azure, integrating native backup and disaster recovery capabilities.
- Customer-Centric Development: Anam highlighted that the evolution toward Azure Resilience is driven by customer feedback, recognizing the need for a unified strategy that spans multiple workloads and provides visibility and compliance monitoring across the entire Azure estate.
- Azure Backup Solutions for SAP Applications:
- Anam detailed the current Azure Backup offerings for SAP workloads, including VM, file share, and HANA database backups, and discussed recent enhancements such as support for additional databases and integration with Azure Site Recovery, with Holger engaging in clarifying questions.
- Comprehensive Backup Coverage: Anam described how Azure Backup supports the protection of SAP applications running in Azure, covering the application layer with VM backups, file systems with Azure Backup for File Share (supporting SMB and soon NFS), and HANA databases with specialized, application-aware backup solutions.
- HANA Database Backup Features: The backup solution for HANA databases offers point-in-time recovery, supports both native streaming and snapshot-based backups, and is designed for high throughput and fast recovery, especially for large databases. Anam noted that Azure Site Recovery is now in private preview for HANA databases, providing a cost-effective disaster recovery option for less RPO-sensitive scenarios.
- Support for Additional Databases: Anam announced that Azure Backup now supports ASE (Sybase) databases as a generally available feature and is developing solutions for other databases such as Oracle, MaxDB, and DB2, aiming to enable native backup for all databases within a customer’s SAP landscape.
- Unified Management Experience: The platform allows customers to monitor and manage backups for all their SAP systems and associated databases from a single interface, streamlining operations and improving visibility.
- Recent Innovations in Azure Backup for SAP:
- Anam presented recent feature additions to Azure Backup for SAP, including enhanced topology support, snapshot-based backups for HANA, and expanded support for ASE, focusing on performance, scalability, and operational efficiency.
- Enhanced Topology Support: Azure Backup now supports scale-out topologies and HANA System Replication (HSR) for HANA databases, enabling cohesive backup and restore experiences across complex SAP deployments.
- Snapshot-Based Backup for HANA: A new snapshot-based backup feature for HANA databases provides higher throughput and instant recovery capabilities, particularly beneficial for large databases. This approach uses forever incremental backups, reducing storage requirements and enabling rapid restores from an instant recovery tier.
- ASE Database Backup Enhancements: Azure Backup for ASE (Sybase) now supports 15-minute RPO, point-in-time recovery, long-term retention, native compression, striping for increased throughput, and high-availability cluster configurations, allowing seamless failover handling during backup operations.
- Operational Flexibility: Customers can combine streaming and snapshot-based backups to optimize for both speed and storage efficiency, and the backup management experience is unified across database types.
- Cybersecurity and Ransomware Recovery Features:
- Anam highlighted new and upcoming cybersecurity features in Azure Backup, such as real-time threat detection with Microsoft Defender integration and cross-tenant restore capabilities, designed to enhance data recoverability and resilience against ransomware, with Holger discussing practical recovery scenarios.
- Existing Security Features: Azure Backup already provides features for security posture monitoring, data recoverability, access control (RBAC), encryption, network security, immutable storage, and soft delete, helping customers maintain robust backup security and compliance.
- Real-Time Threat Detection: A new feature in preview integrates Microsoft Defender with Azure Backup, enabling real-time malware signature scanning of VM backups. Before restoring, customers can verify the scan status to ensure backups are clean, which is especially valuable in ransomware scenarios.
- Cross-Tenant Restore Capability: Anam announced the upcoming cross-tenant restore feature, which will allow customers to restore backups to a different Azure tenant if their original tenant is compromised, providing an additional layer of disaster recovery and business continuity.
- Customer Onboarding and Feedback: Customers interested in the cross-tenant restore preview are invited to participate and provide feedback, supporting the ongoing development of these cybersecurity enhancements.
- Customer Engagement and Next Steps:
- Holger and Anam concluded the session by encouraging the community to explore Azure Resilience and Azure Backup, inviting feedback and participation in upcoming previews, and confirming ongoing innovation based on customer needs. Community Resources and Feedback: Holger committed to sharing links to Azure Resilience and Azure Backup resources in the show notes and encouraged the community to reach out with questions or interest in new features, while Anam reiterated openness to customer feedback and participation in future developments.
Video index
- 0:00 Intro
- 1:00 Intro Anam Shaheer
- 1:30 Staying resilient with Azure Backup
- 2:00 Resiliency in Azure
- 3:30 Reimagine Resiliency for applications
- 5:30 Azure backup
- 8:00 Architecting end-to-end resiliency for SAP workloads
- 12:10 BACKINT stream backup for SAP HANA databases
- 13:00 Snapshot based backup for SAP HANA databases
- 14:50 Backup SAP ASE (Sybase) with a stream based backup
- 16:00 Cyber Security Capabilities from Azure Backup
- 19:45 Detect and Response