Backing up Data in Blob Storage Account

Question

I would like to know what is the best way to backup my data in a Blob Storage Account which has GZRS replication. This will protect me in case of any data corruption. I was going through the MS Doc link https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/point-in-time-restore-manage?tabs=portal which talks about Point in Time restore. To use PIT restore, Soft Delete, Change Feed and Blob Versioning needs to be enabled as per the article. I also saw this blog (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/blog/microsoft-azure-block-blob-storage-backup/) which speaks about using Event Grid and AZ Copy and taking a backup to an alternate storage location. So i would like to know is it easy to use "Point in Time Restore" which is an option provided by Microsoft out of the box, or follow the blog article ? The blog article has lots of pieces to it before i can do the backup of the storage account. Appreciate any help

Also, if i use Point in Time Restore, till how long back can i get back my data, is there any limit to that?

Answer 1

PIT restores for blob data has a number of important limitations to consider, primary among which is the inability to restore at the container level and blocking of access to your blobs during a restore. A custom solution with Event Hubs and AzCopy may not have the same limitations, but would be complex to deploy and manage.

How easy to use it will be may depend on the structure of blobs in your storage account--for example, would you expect to need to just restore a single blob, or if multiple, would the target blobs share a prefix?

The change data is in the same tier as the original blob (not archive), so time to restore depend on the amount of data churn. The Important note here provides some insight, recommending no more than 90 days for data with lots of changes and an example recovery performance: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/point-in-time-restore-overview#retention-period-for-point-in-time-restore