Azure Storage Tables Backup Options

Gabriel Habre 31

After some searching, it seems that even today there aren't many options provided by Azure to back up the azure storage tables.
We have managed to use the older version of AzCopy 7.1, which requires reducing TLS Security on the storage account first to 1.0 every time we want to do a backup. Additionally, this doesn't just pick up all tables and needs a script to be maintained every time a new table is added.
We can probably also build our own .NET code that just reads from one storage account and dumps into another, however this way we lose the Timestamp column when restoring, which can be important to track logs and issues.
Are Azure Storage Tables being discontinued?
Why can't we seem to find any Azure Cloud-based backup offering? Perhaps we should resort to third-party providers or code our own.
Thanks

Oury Ba-MSFT 19,581 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-02-16T21:52:46.887+00:00

Hi @Gabriel Habre Welcome to Microsoft Q&A and thank you for posting your Question.

I understand your pain when trying to back up Azure tables storage. We are working with our Product group to understand more about this behavior. We will reach out to you at the earliest.

Regards,
Oury
Jamie Greeve 31 Reputation points

2022-04-08T09:46:10.057+00:00

This would be a great feature, certainly now the azcopy does not support Table storage anymore.

Kind regards,
Jamie
Maarten Kieft 6 Reputation points

2022-04-08T10:05:32.783+00:00

Yes I'm really looking for something which can help me with this.
Alejandro de la Fuente y de la Rosa 1 Reputation point

2022-04-21T08:40:57.427+00:00

I was using a script with azcopy73. But it only works on windows and has a huge disadvantage. The one that to make the copy you first have to download it, pass it to a blobs and then insert it in the destination table... If you have a large volume of data (as in my case) it will stop being useful.
A solution can be to have another storage where you create the same tables and make the queries to the origin and inserts to a table of the new storage. Having in some of these a table of the date of the last backup, so as not to consult elements already copied again.
(obviously being useless in the case of synchronizing deleted entities)

I'm still looking for a truly useful solution for this task. Since that's a ridiculous workload for functionality that should be built in...

I hope it will help you and if you find a better solution, do not hesitate to communicate it.
TickooSneha-8391 17 Reputation points

2022-10-03T09:51:28.707+00:00

Regards
Sneha

Accepted answer

Jurjen Ladenius Effectory 91 Reputation points

2022-05-03T06:38:36.193+00:00

You can actually use Az-Copy 7.3 that does support TLS1.2.
We automated something using powershell and AZ-Copy 7.3. For us it also stops being useful because of volume.

But since the current version is v10 and MS actually tells us that Table Storage will never be supported by never versions of Az-Copy, there really is no way to backup Table Storage:
https://github.com/Azure/azure-storage-azcopy/issues/1420

ADF seems to be able to copy data, but I'm not so sure about maintainability and cost: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-paas-blog/copying-azure-table-storage-using-azure-data-factory-adf/ba-p/3062401
When making backups I'm not interested in replication, creating e.g. daily/weekly/monthly backups is important. You can achieve replication with geo-redundancy, ADF just gives a window because of scheduling.

Then MS seems to see Cosmos DB as the replacement for table storage. I can see why: It is way more lucrative.
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Gabriel Habre 31 Reputation points

2022-05-05T05:57:18.69+00:00

Hi Jurien,

You are right, Az-Copy 7.3 does support TLS1.2, but gives issues if you don't do some registry changes first on windows:

SystemDefaultTlsVersions & SchUseStrongCrypto should be added as described in below links:

https://github.com/microsoft/azure-pipelines-tasks/issues/10337
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/configmgr/core/plan-design/security/enable-tls-1-2-client

We will be building our own solution after all, which will be backing up to azure blob storage and then using azure backup for the blobs

Jurjen Ladenius Effectory 91 Reputation points

2022-05-05T06:49:00.793+00:00

All our Azure storage accounts have been configured to accept HTTPS only with a minimum TLS version of 1.2 using Azure Policy.

We are running table storage backups using Az-Copy in build pipelines, using powershell and az-copy to create timestamped copies in blob storage.
We haven't had any issues or need for configuration. (though I can assure you that any connection less than TLS1.2 will fail)

Using a really old unmaintained Az-Copy does pose a risk for us as it may stop function at some time or introduce a vulnerability
So the only other option would be a custom solution as there really isn't any other 3rd party solution.

Jurjen Ladenius Effectory 91 Reputation points

2022-05-05T07:04:17.07+00:00

I do see why a host may need to be configured for TLS1.2 with .NET 4.x , we just didn't need any on the hosted build agents.

Gabriel Habre 31 Reputation points

2022-05-05T07:46:46.077+00:00

marked this as an accepted answer cause it will be best to guide those trying to find a solution now. however, as implied it's not the desired out-of-the-box offering we were hoping for.

Meijer, Cas 1 Reputation point

2022-08-29T07:34:30.9+00:00

We have the same need. We would love to have out-of-the-box backup-restore functionality for Azure Table Storage.
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4 additional answers

Bryan Quinn 6 Reputation points

2022-05-02T22:12:32.853+00:00

You can use Azure Data Factory and setup pipelines to copy the Storage table to one or more additional storage accounts, more of a snapshot than a backup, but a way to create additional copies.
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Oury Ba-MSFT 19,581 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-04-15T17:12:50.693+00:00

@Gabriel Habre
Sorry for the delay in my response to your question.
After checking internally with the team. Looks like Azure Table Storage doesn't have any backup capability. The closest you'll get is Storage's geo-redundancy but that's more a DR feature and won't protect you from user/client errors.

*Are Azure Storage Tables being discontinued? *
No Aure tables storage will not be discontinued

Regards,
Oury
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Roman Lushkin 1 Reputation point

2022-09-21T14:44:54.8+00:00

If you are still looking for a solution, I have made a Console App which allows you to backup to a .csv files your Tables, and restore them back : Azure Storage Backup
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Meijer, Cas 1 Reputation point

2022-09-21T15:22:50.6+00:00

We have binary data in our tables. Backing that up to a .csv will not be pretty :-(

Roman Lushkin 1 Reputation point

2022-09-21T15:27:30.78+00:00

I understand.
Check the code maybe you can adapt it so you save your Tables data in another format file?
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Denny Webb 1 Reputation point

2024-09-26T02:14:54.61+00:00

Absolutely unbelievable how little of the Azure surface area is supported for backups using the Azure backup solution, backup vaults. So sloppy.
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Oury Ba-MSFT 19,581 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2024-10-03T21:40:52.2866667+00:00

@Denny Webb

I understand that certain features and functionality are missing. As technology evolves, Azure will continue to improve and expand its backup capabilities to cover more scenarios.

In addition to that Azure Cosmos DB is a powerful and versatile database service that can be a great alternative to Azure Table Storage. if you need a globally distributed, multi-model, high-performance database with low latency, consider Azure Cosmos DB. However, keep in mind that it comes at a slightly higher cost compared to Azure Table Storage. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/security

Azure cosmos db use cases
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Azure Storage Tables Backup Options

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