How best to setup azure backup on a small on premises system

Question

We have a single on premises Windows Server 2019 with two (2) Windows Server 2012 R2 VM's. The physical server is the HyperV host and also handles remote access (VPN). One of the VM's takes most of the load and is the domain controller (active directory), has Exchange Server 2016, SQL Server 2014, file shares for the entire company, DHCP, DNS, Azure AD Connect and Azure Active Directory. The other VM server has Remote Desktop Services and Windows Update. I'm trying to figure out how best to configure Azure Backup to best protect our entire system. I already installed Azure Backup on the physical server and it's not performing as I thought it would. Please advise which Azure Agents (MABS, MAB, MARS) should be installed on which servers and any other suggestions to best protect our system. We are also currently using Windows Server Backup to backup the physical server and the VM with Exchange Server to a removeable hard drive. Any information will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Answer 1

Hello @Bob Gueli Thank you for reaching out to us!

The ask is not clear in the questions. Your intend is to backup System State and file folder only or you want to also backup VMs and guest applications like SQL, Exchange, etc.?

You can use MARS agent to backup System State of the Hyper-V host and if you need System State of VMS as well then the MARS agent needs to be installed inside each VM. Advantage here is no additional storage required but limits the backup types.

MABS can provide all the possible backup options I mentioned above but you need to run additional VM on which you can run MABS and needs to have enough storage so that you can store at least one copy of the backup on local storage and rest you can use Azure to store the backup.

Hope this helps!

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