As organizations adopt Azure Elastic SAN for scalable high-performance storage, we are pleased to announce the public preview of backup support via Azure Backup and Commvault. These fully managed solutions simplify data protection for Elastic SAN volumes, automating backup scheduling, restore point management, and data recovery. They help safeguard your volumes against data loss scenarios such as accidental deletions, ransomware, and application errors. Both the integration of Azure Backup for Elastic SAN and Commvault’s integration with Elastic SAN are in public preview and available for everyone to use. Both of these integrations are powered by Elastic SAN’s crash-consistent, storage native snapshots.

Learn more about Elastic SAN here!

Azure Backup Release Highlights

The public preview of Azure Backup for Elastic SAN introduces several important capabilities designed to enhance your data protection strategy:

Operational Tier Backup with Independent Lifecycle

Each backup operation creates a Managed Disk Incremental Snapshot of your Elastic SAN volume. These snapshots are stored in locally redundant storage (LRS) in supported regions and exist independently of the original volume’s lifecycle. This means your backups remain available for recovery even if the original Elastic SAN volume is deleted, ensuring reliable data protection. The Elastic SAN volumes can be restored from these managed disk snapshots that are backed up by Azure Backup. Vaulting, immutability, and other capabilities are on the roadmap and will be incorporated into subsequent releases.

Daily Restore Points

Azure Backup supports up to 450 restore points with a daily backup schedule. This high number of restore points provides robust short-term retention, allowing you to recover data quickly to any previous state within the retention period. It significantly reduces the risk of data loss due to accidental deletions or other incidents. Retaining backups over 450 days is not available in this preview.

Simplified Management

Customers pick the number of daily backups that they want to retain, and Azure Backup does the rest including creating new backups and deleting oldest backups to match the retention setting. Configuration and monitoring are integrated with the Azure Business Continuity Center, giving you a unified and streamlined management experience. This automation allows you to focus on your core business activities while Azure handles the complexity of data protection.

 Important Cost Information

During the public preview, the following cost structure applies:

•  The Azure Backup Protected Instance Fee for Elastic SAN volumes is not charged
• Charges for Managed Disk Incremental Snapshots in the operational tier apply at standard Azure rates. The first snapshot that is exported will be a full snapshot.

In summary, Azure Backup for Elastic SAN delivers a powerful and comprehensive backup solution. With features such as independent lifecycle backups, high-frequency restore points, and simplified management, you can confidently protect your Elastic SAN volumes from a range of data loss scenarios. Try this new capability to experience enhanced data protection for your workloads.

Commvault Release Highlights

Protecting Azure Elastic SAN Volumes with Commvault 

Our partners at Commvault continue to deliver meaningful innovation through deep integration with Microsoft Azure. In the below writeup, Commvault showcases how Azure Elastic SAN volumes are now protected within Commvault’s platform—bringing unified, enterprise-grade protection to performance intensive Elastic SAN workloads. If you're exploring scalable, resilient cloud storage with built-in data protection, this is a valuable read.  

Here are highlights from Commvault on their added support for Elastic SAN protection 

Thanks to a close partnership between Commvault and Microsoft, organizations can now take advantage of robust backup and recovery for Azure Elastic SAN storage. This deep integration means you benefit from the trusted protection and unified management of Commvault’s platform, now extended to Azure’s high-performance, scalable Elastic SAN solution. As a result, you can easily safeguard your mission-critical workloads in the cloud while enjoying the flexibility, centralized management, and resilience that Elastic SAN provides. 

Designed for Scalable, Resilient Cloud Environments 

With Commvault’s integration, organizations can protect Azure Elastic SAN volumes attached to Azure virtual machines (VMs) using the same trusted platform they rely on for comprehensive data protection for many other Azure resources. 
 Key capabilities include: 

• Snapshot-based protection:IntelliSnap support enables rapid, low-impact backups that minimize performance impact on production systems. The number of snapshots that can be retained is configurable based on your storage plan. Commvault offers a day-based retention plan that defaults to 30 days but can be extended indefinitely. Alternatively, you can retain Elastic SAN snapshots based on a snapshot count as well.  
• Flexible recovery options: Full-VM and attach-disk restores are supported, including cross-region backups and restores. In cross-region restores, Elastic SAN volumes are automatically restored as managed disks.
• Broad platform compatibility: Both Windows- and Linux-based VMs are supported. Elastic SAN volume discovery requires PowerShell on Windows or Python 3 on Linux.

Deployment and Configuration Considerations 

For optimal performance and streamlined protection workflows, enterprises should consider the following implementation guidance linked below. App-consistent restore points for Elastic SAN volumes are not currently supported. Attach-disk restores to a VM will result in managed disks regardless of source (primary or secondary copy). ESAN volumes will need to be connected to the VM via iSCSI.

Accelerate Cloud Confidence with Commvault 

Azure Elastic SAN represents a significant advancement in cloud storage architecture. With Commvault’s integrated protection, enterprises can deploy this powerful capability to help make sure their data remains secure, recoverable, and compliant.  To learn more about protecting Azure workloads – including Elastic SAN – contact your Commvault account team or visit our Azure protection documentation. The requirements for using this integration can be found here.

Conclusion

The Azure Elastic SAN team is committed to supporting your backup needs and giving you peace of mind as you run workloads on Azure. With both Azure Backup and Commvault integrations, you have flexible options designed for different scenarios: Azure Backup is best suited for Azure-native, single volume snapshots, offering a 450-day retention period, seamless integration, and simplicity within the Azure ecosystem. Commvault, on the other hand, excels at providing backups for multiple volumes attached to the same VM, as well as advanced enterprise features like granular recovery, an indefinite retention period and robust retention management. If you have any questions about which solution is right for you, please contact us at AzElasticSAN-Ex@microsoft.com —we’re happy to help.