Backup and restore using Microsoft Azure

The recipes in this chapter, thus far, have been focused on Windows Server Backup. An alternative to performing backups is backing up to the cloud. This recipe demonstrates using Azure Backup as an alternative to the Windows Server Backup product.

Getting ready

For this recipe to succeed, you need a computer to backup from, an Azure account, and you need to have the Azure cmdlets loaded. You also need to load the online backup cmdlets (which you do in this recipe).

In this recipe, you use SRV2 as the server to backup (and restore). You can run this recipe on any server.

To load the Azure cmdlets, you use the Install-Module cmdlet, as demonstrated in the Explore PowerShellGet recipe in Chapter 1, What's new in PowerShell and Windows Server. You use this cmdlet on SRV2 to find and load the Azure Resource Manager cmdlets that you use in this recipe. Then, you can view the newly installed module, as follows:

Install-Module -Name AzureRm -Repository PSGallery...