Azure Backup is a Microsoft cloud-based data protection solution that, making available several components, allows you to back up your data, regardless of their geographical location (on-premises or in the cloud) toward a Recovery Service vault in Azure. This article will examine the main aspects concerning the protection of Linux virtual machines present in Microsoft Azure, using Azure Backup.
In the security scenario of Azure Iaas virtual machines (Infrastructure as a Service) do not need any backup server, but the solution is completely integrated into the Azure fabric and are supported all Linux distributions approved to run in Azure environment, with the exception of Core OS. The protection of other Linux distributions is also allowed provided that there is the possibility to install the virtual machine VM agent and there is support for Python.
How Azure back up Linux VM
On Linux systems are installed, during the execution of the first backup job, a specific extension called VMSnapshotLinux, through which Azure Backup, during job execution, pilot taking snapshots that are transferred to the Recovery Service vault.
Figure 1 – Principles of backing up Azure IaaS VM with Azure Backup
To have an effective data protection you should be able to make consistent backups at the application layer. Azure Backup by default for Linux virtual machines creates consistent backups at file system level but can also be configured to create application-consistent backup. On Windows systems this is done using the VSS component, while for Linux VM it is made available one scripting framework through which you can run the pre-scripts and post-scripts to control the backup execution.
Figure 2 – Application-consistent backups in Linux VM on Azure
Azure Backup before starting the virtual machine snapshot creation process invokes the pre-script, if this is completed successfully the snaspshot is created, at the end of which runs the post-script. The scripts are fully customizable by the user and they need to be created according to specific characteristics of the application present on the virtual machine. For more details please visit the Microsoft's official documentation.
How to enable the backup of Linux virtual machines running on Azure
Recently it has been introduced the possibility to enable from the Azure portal the protection of virtual machines already from the moment of creation:
Figure 3 - Enabling backup when creating the VM
Alternatively you can enable the protection after creating the virtual machine by selecting it from the Recovery Service vault or by accessing the blade of the VM in the section Operations – Backup. From the same panel, you can view the status of backups.
File Recovery of Linux virtual machine on Azure
Azure Backup, besides the possibility to restore the entire virtual machine, also allows for Linux systems to restore individual files using the File Recovery feature. To do this you can follow these steps below.
From the Azure portal, you select the virtual machine for which you need to restore the files and in the Backup section you start the task of File Recovery:
Figure 4 - Starting the process of File Recovery
At this point will appear the panel where you must select the recovery point that you want to use for the restore operation. Then press the button Download Script which generates a script with extension .sh, and password, that is used to mount the recovery point as system's local disk.
Figure 5 – Recovery Point selection and script download
The script must be copied on the Linux machine and to do that you can use WinSCP:
Figure 6 – Copy of the script on the Linux machine
By accessing the Linux system in terminal mode, you must assign execution permission to the copied script , using the command chmod +x and then you can run the script:
Figure 7 – Script for File Recovery
At the time of the execution the script requires the password which is shown in the Azure portal and then proceed with steps for making your recovery point connection via iSCSI channel and mount it as file system.
Now you can access the mount point path which exposes the selected recovery point and restore or consult the necessary files:
Figure 8 – Access to the path of the mount point
After completing the restore operation is appropriate to make an unmount of the discs through the appropriate button from the Azure portal (in any case the connection to the mountpoint is closed forcefully after 12 hours) and you need to run the script with the parameter -clean to remove the path of the recovery point from the machine.
Figure 9 – Unmount disks and removing mount points from the machine
If in the VM for which you want to restore the files are present LVM partitions, or RAID arrays you must perform the same procedure, but on a different Linux machine to avoid conflicts in the discs.
Conclusions
Azure Backup is a fully integrated solution in the Azure fabric that allows you to protect easily and with extreme effectiveness even Linux virtual machines present on Azure. All this happens without the need to implement complex infrastructure for the data protection. Azure Backup also helps to protect many large-scale systems and to maintain a centralized control of the data protection architecture.
