Database Backup in Azure VM with SQL

Hi, based on your description, you're using Azure VM Backup with application-consistent snapshots, rather than SQL Server workload-level backups. These are two different backup mechanisms.

Azure VM Backup uses VSS to create application-consistent snapshots, and for SQL Server it triggers a VSS Full (Copy-Only) backup by default. That's why you can see backup entries in the SQL Server backup history.

If you want to view backup details in Azure Portal, navigate to Recovery Services vault → Backup items → Azure Virtual Machine, select your VM, and review its backup jobs and available recovery points. However, since this is a VM-level backup, you won't see individual SQL database backups listed separately.

So how to restore the databases? With VM-level backups, you can restore the entire VM or restore its disks from a recovery point. To recover an individual database, you can restore the disks to a separate VM, access the SQL Server database files (.mdf/.ldf), and attach or recover the database in SQL Server.

If you need database-level backup management and restore operations directly from Azure Portal, consider configuring Azure Backup for SQL Server in Azure VMs instead.

Microsoft documentation:

- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-azure-vms-introduction 

- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-azure-arm-restore-vms 

- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-azure-sql-database 

Hope this helps!