Default backup policy

Question

If an organisation has its own backup standards, should it use default policies or custom policy

Answer 1

Hello Davidmiller Miller

Thank you for posting this query on Microsoft Q&A platform.

If an organization has its own backup standards, it is recommended to create and use custom backup policies that match its required backup schedule, retention, and naming conventions. The default backup policies are system-managed and can be safely ignored if custom policies are in use. They will remain in the vault (or be recreated automatically if deleted) but won't be used unless explicitly assigned to protected items.

When you create a Recovery Services vault, Azure Backup automatically creates a small set of system‑managed default backup policies. These policies ensure that baseline backup functionality is always available in any vault. Examples include policies such as HourlyBackup, DefaultPolicy, or Enhanced. These default policies are system‑managed, can be deleted temporarily but are recreated automatically and act as fallback policies when no custom policy is defined. You can safely ignore these default policies if your organization uses its own standards for policy naming, scheduling, or retention. Create custom backup policies that match your requirements and assign your protected items to those custom policies. The default policies will continue to exist in the vault but will not be used unless explicitly selected.

Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-azure-manage-vms#run-an-on-demand-backup

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Thanks,
Suchitra.

Answer 2

If an organization already has established internal backup, retention, compliance, or disaster recovery standards, it should generally use custom Azure Backup policies rather than relying solely on the default policies. The default Azure Backup policies are designed to provide basic protection with common retention settings, but they are intentionally generic and may not align with enterprise requirements for retention duration, backup frequency, recovery point objectives (RPOs), legal hold obligations, or operational recovery procedures.

Custom policies allow the organization to match Azure Backup behavior to existing governance standards. For example, many enterprises require different retention periods for production systems, financial records, regulated workloads, and development environments. A custom policy can define hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly retention schedules that align with those requirements while ensuring consistency across subscriptions and business units.

Using custom policies also improves auditability and compliance. During security audits or regulatory reviews, organizations are often required to demonstrate that backup configurations enforce documented standards. Default policies can create gaps if they do not reflect approved corporate policies. Custom policies make it easier to prove that backup schedules and retention settings were intentionally configured according to organizational controls.

Operationally, custom policies provide better workload segmentation. Critical servers, SQL databases, Azure Files, and virtual machines may all require different backup frequencies and recovery expectations. Applying a single default policy across all workloads can either overprotect low-priority systems, increasing storage costs, or under-protect critical systems, increasing business risk.

That stated, default policies can still be useful in limited scenarios, such as proof-of-concept deployments, temporary workloads, small environments without formal governance requirements, or as a baseline template that administrators later customize. In larger or regulated environments, relying exclusively on default policies is usually insufficient.

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hth

Marcin