What is the best way to backup Azure Blob Storage contents

Question

I know that the Azure Storage entities (blobs, tables and queues) have a built-in resiliency, meaning that they are replicated to 3 different servers in the same datacenter. On top of that they may also be replicated to a different datacenter altogether that is physically located in a different geographical region. The chance of losing your data in this case is close to zero for all practical purposes.

However, what happens if a sloppy developer (or the one under the influence of alcohol :)) accidentally deletes the storage account through the Azure Portal or the Azure Storage Explorer tool? Worst yet, what if a hacker gets hold of your account and clears the storage? Is there a way to retrieve the gigabytes of deleted blobs or is that it? Somehow I think there has to be an elegant solution that Azure infrastructure provides here but I cannot find any documentation.

The only solution I can think of is to write my own process (worker role) that periodically backs up my entire storage to a different subscription/account, thus essentially doubling the cost of storage and transactions. Any thoughts?

Regards,

Archil

Answer 1

Depending on where you want to backup your data, there are two options available:

1. Backing up data locally - If you wish to backup your data locally in your infrastructure, you could: a. Write your own application using either Storage Client Library or consuming REST API or b. Use 3rd party tools like Cerebrata Azure Management Cmdlets (Disclosure: I work for Cerebrata).

2. Backing up data in the cloud - Recently, Windows Azure Storage team announced Asynchronous Copy Blob functionality which will essentially allow you to copy data from one storage account to another storage account without downloading the data locally. The catch here is that your target storage account should be created after 7th June 2012. You can read more about this functionality on Windows Azure Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazurestorage/archive/2012/06/12/introducing-asynchronous-cross-account-copy-blob.aspx.

Hope this helps.