Backup jobs monitoring

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Azure Backup Vaults

Keeping Azure Backup Vaults stable

Azure Backup is an important component of Azure ecosystem that helps organizations perform secure cloud backups of their on-premise and Azure-based virtual machines. In fact, many organizations begin their usage of Azure specifically for its backup capability, often because Azure cloud backup solves an important need and is very simple to get started with.

In this case study, we’ll discuss keeping Azure Backup Vaults stable via CloudMonix.

Azure Backup Vaults monitoring

CloudMonix uses Azure Monitoring API to monitor Azure Backup Vaults and provides support for both Classic and v2/ARM storage accounts. See this article to learn more about differences between Classic and ARM resources monitoring. Read below on how to configure monitoring of Azure Backup Vaults.

Handling alerts

CloudMonix users can receive alerts based on any metrics available for Azure Backup Vaults. All alerts are based on templates and are easy to set up. To learn more how to configure alerts read below >

Automating backup jobs

Automation features allow users to set up powerful reactive, proactive and scheduled actions. For example, CloudMonix allows users to automatically kick off jobs based on custom criteria or trigger backup jobs according to schedule. For more information on the configuration read below >

How to configure Azure Backup monitoring

CloudMonix provides a default template for monitoring Azure Backup that contains most useful Metrics and Alerts. In order to configure Azure Backup with the default template select the default template in the resource configuration dialog.
CloudMonix - proactive reboots

When configuring a resource it’s necessary to specify whether it is under Recovery Services namespace (v2). The Microsoft’s recommendation is to move to the new Recovery Services namespace. Since the monitoring data published by Azure for other namespaces is unreliable and might be delayed, it’s also recommended to use Recovery Services namespace for the optimal CloudMonix experience.

CloudMonix - proactive reboots

How to configure Alerts in Azure Backup Vaults

CloudMonix allows receiving alerts when jobs fail or don’t start at a specified time. Default template comes with a pre-configured alert on the detected incomplete jobs which fires when a backup job with an incomplete status has been detected and sustained for a specified period of time.

It is also possible to add alerts with custom criteria. In order to add a new alert use Add New Alert button in the alerts configuration dialog.

CloudMonix - proactive reboots

How to trigger backup jobs automatically

Triggering backup jobs according to specified schedule is one common use of CloudMonix automation. In order to schedule an automatic backup go to Actions tab in the resource configuration dialog and click the Add New Action button. Select Schedule option in the Evaluate condition based on field. In the Execute Command field select AzureBackupVaultRunBackup. Specify schedule, container, and workload and your scheduled backup is configured.

It is also possible to configure backup jobs automation based on custom criteria. To do this select Expression option in the Evaluate condition based on field and enter the desired criteria in the Expression field.

Azure Backup Vaults - scheduled backup
Further reading on the available metrics used in CloudMonix for monitoring, alerts and automation of Azure Backup Vaults is available in this article.