Long term reteion backup for Azure SQL managed instance

Question

The built-in backup LTR is up to 10 years. However, the data was required to keep beyond 10 years. What's the best way to overcome the limitation?

Answer 1

Hi @Kelvin Zheng , welcome to Microsoft QnA Forum.

You are right in mentioning that the built-in backup LTR is supported up to 10 years for Azure SQL managed Instance. However we have alternatives to store the backup for longer period through manually uploading the backup on the Azure Blob Storage and defining the retention policies of those blob storage.

1. Create and upload the backup on blob storage as mentioned in the below article:
   Native database backup in Azure SQL Managed Instance
2. Define the access tiers for blob storage as mentioned in the article
   Hot - Optimized for storing data that is accessed frequently.
   Cool - Optimized for storing data that is infrequently accessed and stored for at least 30 days.
   Archive - Optimized for storing data that is rarely accessed and stored for at least 180 days with flexible latency requirements, on the order of hours.

Based on the requirement we can set these access tiers and have the blob storage available for much longer time. Below is the example to set the blob storage to delete after 7 years from last modification. We can change the policy according to out need:

Optimize costs by automating Azure Blob Storage access tiers

Please let us know if this helps or else we can discuss further.

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