Microsoft announces application consistent backup for Linux VMs on Azure

Microsoft Azure Backup service already provides file system consistent backup of Linux Virtual Machines running in Azure. Recently, Microsoft announced that they are extending this feature to support application consistent backups for enterprise critical applications such as MySQL, InterSystems Caché, and SAP HANA running on popular Linux distros like Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It also allows admins to execute custom pre and post scripts as part of the VM backup process. Read the below example to know you can take advantage of the framework.

You can use the pre-script to quiesce or redirect the application IOs momentarily using application native APIs and flush in memory content to disk before taking the VM snapshot. You can then use the post-script to thaw the IOs post snapshot completion and resume normal application operation. This will ensure application consistent VM backup for any application you are running. Some applications require fsfreeze to be disabled so that it does not interfere with their quiesce logic, so we also provide a capability to disable Linux fsfreeze which is executed by default while taking Linux VM backup using Azure Backup.

Learn more about this feature here.