Microsoft Azure users can now rest a little easier when worrying about restoring their data following a cyberattack.
The company has announced an update that allows Azure users to restore a 15-day old backup version of their data, not just 72 hours, as had previously been the case.
Microsoft says the change should prove useful for organizations worried about ransomware that might have gone undetected by antivirus solutions for a few days before being deployed.
The announcement also further explains Azure’s retention governance. For the first two hours, Azure will make data snapshots every five minutes. After those two hours pass, the service will start pruning the snapshots, leaving fewer instances.
For the first two past days, Azure will keep an hourly snapshot, and for the period of 8-15 days in the past, the service will take one snapshot every four hours.
All of this, though, comes with a cost. Deciding to keep 15 days worth of backups means choosing the option of Managed Disks (unmanaged only offer three days). For every instance that is protected, a price must be paid, with Central US users will pay $16 a month for instances in customer-owned sites, or $25 for Azure.
Azure Storage, as well as data transfers, also come with a price tag.
The good news is that application-consistent recovery points, which are disabled by default, can be enabled. Furthermore, the first 31 days are free.
Microsoft has been working hard to improve the resilience of its Azure offering. In November 2021, the company announced that it’s bringing its “outage mode” in Azure to both web-based and desktop applications.
And in May 2021, it also announced a whole slew of upgrades to Azure, geared towards helping developers streamline and modernize business processes.
The battle of cloud hosting providers is heating up, but Amazon’s AWS is still the reigning champion with a 32% market share, according to figures from Statista. Second-placed Azure holds 21%, while Google rounds off the top three with an 8% share.
Via: The Register
