I have an Azure virtual machine that I use to run my java web applications. These web applications make files in the filesystem and are constantly updating the MySQL database I have on the virtual machine.
My question is, how does Azure virtual machine backups work? Would all I need to do be to backup the VM to Azure backup and it would backup a snapshot of the database and the files, so that way I can always simply restore this backup?
Or should I keep a separate MySQL and files backup location, and if so where?
Update:
I ended up using the following application connected to my dropbox account. Works very well. http://mysqlbackupftp.com
Best Answer
Azure Backup makes the process very easy by simply restoring the entire VM for you. You can either replace or create a new VM based on the last backup job. The problem with Azure Backup is the limit of 1 job per day. For most scenarios, this RPO is not good enough.
In parallel, attach new data disks to the MySQL VM and create scripts to backup the database at different times of the day (cron).
Cronjob for automatic DB backup to date prefixed file:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/123189/cronjob-for-automatic-db-backup-to-date-prefixed-file