How to Keep the backup for long term

Question

I am facing an issue related to pricing and billing information. and want to remove the resource group (RG) but need to keep the backup of the database (DB) for a long time. Seeking advice on the best cost performance for this.

PS - Based on common issues that we have seen from customers and other sources, we are posting these questions to help the Azure community

Answer 1

Greetings!

There is no way to download LTR backup directly from Azure Storage.

You should follow Long-term backup retention - Azure SQL Database & Azure SQL Managed Instance | Microsoft Learn to configure LTR backup policy before deleting resource group.

And should use PowerShell command to get details information about LTR backups after deleting resource group.

For more information, you can refer to Azure SQL Database: Manage long-term backup retention - Azure SQL Database | Microsoft Learn and Get-AzSqlDatabaseLongTermRetentionBackup (Az.Sql) | Microsoft Learn

Regards

Geetha

Answer 2

There can be 2 cost effective ways for a long term backup:

1. In case if the backup need not be accessed on an immediate basis, you can extract the database bacpac and upload in azure blob storage: this would be the most cost effective solution And in case if there is need to access the db, you need to restore the bacpac
2. Another scenario would be to clone the current database and modify the database tier to serverless type which would auto pause in case of no activity.