Disaster recovery options for SQL Server in Azure

The first step in any good disaster recovery plan is having reliable and redundant backups. SQL Server and Azure work together to make this simple—SQL Server 2012 (specifically Service Pack 1, Cumulative Update 2) onward has supported backing up directly to Azure Blob storage through the BACKUP TO URL syntax. This feature was enhanced in SQL Server 2016 and supports backups larger than 1 TB, and striping the backup to improve performance. Commonly used tools such as the built-in maintenance plans and Ola Hallengen's maintenance scripts support backing up to Azure Blob storage.

Note

While backup to URL is supported in tools, you should note that neither maintenance plans nor Ola Hallengren's scripts support the pruning of older backups. A common workaround for this is to add an SQL Server Agent job step that removes the older backup files upon completion of your backup tasks.

Additionally, you have to use Azure...