Azure Fundamentals · Lesson

Restoring from Azure Backup

Perform a full VM restore and an item-level file recovery from a backup snapshot, and understand recovery point objectives for different workload types.

Recovery Points and Restore Options

Each successful backup run creates a recovery point — a point-in-time snapshot of the protected resource. Azure Backup retains recovery points according to the backup policy's retention rules. When you need to restore, you select a recovery point and choose a restore type. The available types depend on the resource: for VMs you can do a full VM restore, disk restore, or file-level item recovery. Understanding these options helps you choose the fastest path to recovery.

# List recovery points for a VM
az backup recoverypoint list \
  --resource-group myRG \
  --vault-name myRecoveryVault \
  --container-name myVM \
  --item-name myVM \
  --workload-type VM \
  --output table

Full VM Restore

A full VM restore recreates the entire virtual machine — OS disk, data disks, and network interface — from a recovery point. You can restore to the original location (replacing the existing VM) or to an alternate location (creating a new VM with a different name or in a different resource group or region). Full restore is the slowest option but recovers a completely broken or deleted VM. Cross-region restore is also supported if the vault uses GRS storage.

# Trigger a full VM restore to alternate location
az backup restore restore-azurevm \
  --resource-group myRG \
  --vault-name myRecoveryVault \
  --container-name myVM \
  --item-name myVM \
  --rp-name <recovery-point-name> \
  --restore-to-staging-storage-account myStorageAccount \
  --storage-account-resource-group myRG

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