Azure Backup & Restore

  • Published on Mar 18, 2026
  • 2 minute(s) read
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Backup & Restore using Azure Backup

Lucidity guarantees that the customer's existing backup and restore process will remain unchanged.

Azure Disk Backup is a native, cloud-based backup solution that protects your data in managed disks. It's a simple, secure, and cost-effective solution that enables you to configure protection for managed disks in a few steps.

Azure Disk Backup offers a turnkey solution that provides snapshot lifecycle management for managed disks by automating periodic creation of snapshots and retaining it for configured duration using backup policy. You can manage the disk snapshots with zero infrastructure cost and without the need for custom scripting or any management overhead. This is a crash-consistent backup solution that takes point-in-time backup of a managed disk using incremental snapshots with support for multiple backups per day.

If you require application-consistent backup of a virtual machine including the data disks, or an option to restore an entire virtual machine from backup, restore a file or folder, or restore to a secondary region, then use the Azure VM backup solution. Azure Backup offers side-by-side support for backup of managed disks using Disk Backup in addition to Azure VM backup solutions.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/disk-backup-overview

1. Backup and restore entire VM (Crash Consistent)

Summary : Lucidity autoscaler works seamlessly with the Azure backup service. Restoring a new virtual machine using azure backup of a VM onboarded to Lucidity works well with all attached disks. The newly restored VM is also automatically onboarded to Lucidity.

  1. A new Virtual Machine is created for a demo of the backup : backup-test-1

  2. Using a load generator dummy data is added in a folder in F: drive

  3. backup-test-1 VM is onboarded to Lucidity. The mount point selected is F: drive.

Azure Portal screenshot titled backup-test-1 | Disks showing the Disks blade with a list of data disks (LUNs, disk names, storage type Premium SSD LRS, sizes in GiB, Max IOPS, Max throughput) and a pane with navigation on the left. The screenshot shows five attached data disks and UI elements like Overview, Activity log, Disks, and a table of disk entries.

Dark-themed dashboard screenshot showing Disk overview with two chart panels labeled Disk Utilization and Provisioned and Used Disk, time range controls at top-right and a resource path header at top-left.

4. Create a backup of the Virtual Machine using Azure backup. For each backup run, it creates a new restore point.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/quick-backup-vm-portal

Azure portal backup-test-1 | Backup blade screenshot showing left navigation (Operations, Backup, Recovery points), a purple banner about Backup Center, and a Recovery points table listing creation times and consistency types.

5. Create a new Virtual Machine from the restore point.

Azure portal restoredbackup | Disks blade showing disk details and a list of attached data disks, including columns like Disk name, Storage type, Size (GiB), Max IOPS, Max throughput

6. The restored VM is automatically onboarded to Lucidity dashboard (F: drive)

Lucidity dashboard (dark theme) showing a Disk overview panel with header columns Virtual Machine, Mount Point, Size (GiB), Utilization %, Savings, Status and two charts titled Disk Utilization and Provisioned and Used Disk

2. Backup and restore disks (Application Consistent)

Summary : Lucidity autoscaler works out of the box with restoring multiple disks. Restoring new disks with the disk backup and attaching them on a new Virtual machine does not require any changes. The mount point restoration works seamlessly.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-managed-disks

  1. Create a Backup vault

Azure Portal Start: Create Vault dialog screenshot showing Vault Type selection with Backup vault option selected. The screenshot displays supported datasources lists (Azure Disks, Azure Blobs, Azure Database for PostgreSQL servers, Kubernetes Services (Preview), etc.), radio buttons for vault types, and the Continue and Cancel buttons at the bottom of the dialog.

2. Backup the disks attached to the Original VM as shown in the next steps.

Azure portal backup-test-1 | Disks view showing the Data disks section for a virtual machine — table of attached data disks with columns such as Disk name, Storage type (e.g., Premium SSD LRS), Size (GiB), Max IOPS, Max throughput and Encryption; screenshot framed with a black border

The mount point chosen for backup in this demo is F: drive.

Windows File Explorer Devices and drives (5) view showing Windows (C:), Temporary Storage (D:), DVD Drive (E:), New Volume (F:) (showing 9.49 TB free of 9.49 TB) and New Volume_old (Z:); capacity bars visible; screenshot framed with a black border

3. The drive is added with dummy data (751 files, 2.82 GB)

Windows File Explorer showing the Data folder with many files listed and a Properties dialog open that reads 751 Files, 0 Folders and Size: 2.82 GB (3,033,045,780 bytes).

4. Create On Demand or scheduled backup of the disks

[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Backup jobs list showing multiple entries labeled "On-demand backup" with Status "Completed" and timestamps, displayed in a table-like UI with pagination controls at the bottom left. ]

5. Restore the disks from the backup vault.

Screenshot of a backup job list inside a bordered box showing multiple backup instances with columns such as Backup instance, Operation (Restore), Status (Completed with green check icons), Start time (timestamps), and Duration. Rows show several restore entries and a vertical scrollbar on the right.

6. Attach the restored disks to a new Virtual Machine

Screenshot of an Azure Disks blade titled restored-backup | Disks showing the disk overview and a Data disks section listing attached disks with columns like LUN, Disk name, Storage type (Premium SSD LRS), Size (GiB), Max IOPS, Max throughput and Encryption (SSE with PMK). The left navigation pane and toolbar (Save, Discard, Refresh) are visible.

7. The mount point F: drive is restored

Screenshot of Windows File Explorer Devices and drives showing drives: Windows (C:), Temporary Storage (D:), DVD Drive (E:), and New Volume (F:) highlighted with 9.49 TB free of 9.49 TB. The window is inside a bordered frame.

Note - For certain VMs, it requires a reboot to display the new Virtual disk.

The data also remains intact within the drive (751 files, 2.82GB)

A Windows File Explorer window for New Volume (F:) showing a list of files (including 'New Text Document' and many GUID-like filenames such as ffd7bd10-f3c9-11ed-...), with an overlapping Properties dialog that reads 751 Files, 0 Folders and shows Type: Multiple Types; Location: All in F:\Data; Size: 2.82 GB (3,033,045,780 bytes); Size on disk: 2.82 GB (3,035,136,000 bytes).

3. Backup and restore Files (Azure file recovery)

Summary : Lucidity autoscaler works out of the box with restoring files from Azure VMs. Restoring files and folders with the Azure backup with Lucidity onboarded disks does not require any changes.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-azure-restore-files-from-vm

Screenshot of the Azure File Recovery blade showing a bordered panel with Step 1: Select restore point, a restore point selection field, Step 2: Download script to browse and recover files with a Download Executable button and password field, and Step 3: Unmount the disks after recovery.

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