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Create a Recovery Services vault

To create a Recovery Services vault

• If you haven’t already done so, sign in to the Azure Portal using your Azure subscription.
• On the Hub menu, click Browse and in the list of resources, type Recovery Services and click Recovery Services vaults.
• On the Recovery Services vaults menu, click Add.

The Recovery Services vault blade opens, prompting you to provide a Name, Subscription, Resource group, and Location.

• For Name, enter a friendly name to identify the vault.
• Click Subscription to see the available list of subscriptions.
• Click Resource group to see the available list of Resource groups, or click New to create a new Resource group.
• Click Location to select the geographic region for the vault. This choice determines the geographic region where your backup data is sent.
• Click Create.

If you don’t see your vault listed after it has been completed, click Refresh. When the list refreshes, click the name of the vault.

To determine storage redundancy

When you first create a Recovery, Services vault you determine how storage is replicated.

• Click on the new vault to open the dashboard.
• In the Settings blade, which opens automatically with your vault dashboard, click Backup Infrastructure.
• In the Backup Infrastructure blade, click Backup Configuration to view the Storage replication type.
• Choose the appropriate storage replication option for your vault.

Now that you’ve created a vault, you prepare your infrastructure to back up files and folders by downloading the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services agent and vault credentials.

 Download files

• Click Settings on the Recovery Services vault dashboard.
• Click Getting Started > Backup on the Settings blade.
• Click Backup goal on the Backup blade.
• Select On-premises from the Where is your workload running? menu.
• Select Files and folders from the What do you want to back up? menu, and click OK.

Download the Recovery Services agent

• Click Download Agent for Windows Server or Windows Client in the Prepare infrastructure
• Click Save in the download pop-up. By default, the exe file is saved to your Downloads folder.

Download vault credentials

• Click Download > Save on the Prepare infrastructure blade.

Install and register the agent

• Locate and double click the exe from the Downloads folder (or other saved location).
• Complete the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services Agent Setup Wizard. To complete the wizard, you need to:
  • Choose a location for the installation and cache folder.
  • Provide your proxy server info if you use a proxy server to connect to the internet.
  • Provide your user name and password details if you use an authenticated proxy.
  • Provide the downloaded vault credentials
  • Save the encryption passphrase in a secure location.

The agent is now installed, and your machine is registered to the vault. You’re ready to configure and schedule your backup.

Back up your files and folders

The initial backup includes two key tasks:

• Schedule the backup
• Back up files and folders for the first time

To complete the initial backup, you use the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services agent.

To schedule the backup

• Open the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services agent. You can find it by searching your machine for Microsoft Azure Backup.
• In the Recovery Services agent, click Schedule Backup.
• On the Getting started page of the Schedule Backup Wizard, click Next.
• On the Select Items to Backup page, click Add Items.
• Select the files and folders that you want to back up, and then click Okay.
• Click Next.
• On the Specify Backup Schedule page, specify the backup schedule and click Next.

You can schedule daily (at a maximum rate of three times per day) or weekly backups.

• On the Select Retention Policy page, select the Retention Policy for the backup copy.

The retention policy specifies the duration for which the backup will be stored. Rather than just specifying a “flat policy” for all backup points, you can specify different retention policies based on when the backup occurs. You can modify the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly retention policies to meet your needs.

• On the Choose Initial Backup Type page, choose the initial backup type. Leave the option Automatically over the network selected, and then click Next.
• On the Confirmation page, review the information, and then click Finish.
• After the wizard finishes creating the backup schedule, click Close.

To back up files and folders for the first time

• In the Recovery Services agent, click Back Up Now to complete the initial seeding over the network.
• On the Confirmation page, review the settings that the Back Up Now Wizard will use to back up the machine. Then click Back Up.
• Click Close to close the wizard. If you do this before the backup process finishes, the wizard continues to run in the background.

After the initial backup is completed, the Job completed status appears in the Backup console.

If you need help, do contact us.