Automatic Backups

Microsoft provides automated backups for Azure SQL databases. Automatic backup consists of full, differential, and log backups. The first automatic full backup is performed immediately after the database is provisioned. The differential backup is scheduled to occur every hour, and transaction log backups are scheduled for every 5-10 minutes. The full backup is scheduled for once a week:

Figure 3.1: Automatic backups

Note

Automatic backups are inaccessible. You can't download or do a manual restore from an automatic backup.

However, you can use an automatic backup to restore the database using the Azure portal, Azure CLI, PowerShell, and .NET SDKs.

Backup Storage

Microsoft gives you free backup storage that is double the size of your maximum provisioned database storage. For example, if you have a 100 GB standard Azure SQL database, you get 200 GB of free backup storage. You can control the free backup storage size by limiting the retention period of the backups...