 Hi everybody, how you doing? Welcome to the latest episode of from the rock to the cloud and As you know, we talk about everything to do with Windows Server a little bit of Azure all that kind of exciting stuff and As always we've got a guest to help the incompetent post Through understanding this technology. So today we've got a very special guest We've got the Batman which is why I've got bar up in my up in my pixel box behind me But we've got Anthony Bartello All the way from well, you're you're from you're from the rock. So this is like perfect We're you from like we couldn't have a better expert to talk about server and rock and We're gonna talk about I think as you're back up recovery today. I mean, so you're you're the right man for this Tell us a little bit about yourself So yeah Maltese background. I live in Canada in Toronto. It's warm here right now You see have snow a lot of people say do you live in an igloo? No, it's it's hot here right now We do use Celsius. So it's about 30 degrees right now and I'm excited to talk about as your backup, especially because of the Need for it in hybrid, right? You know, we hear the stories. Hey, I was back in the day of solid on-premises implementation of architecture and I remember going through putting the DLT tape into the into my Proline 3000 Doing the backups on a nightly basis doing the weekly backup doing the monthly backup the yearly backup You name it to the fiscal year Checking the tapes having unlocked in a safe did the whole thing When you know, I was going further on in my career the big thing that changed for me in terms of backup was the whole aspect of Are the tapes enough right like the example? I give is the the organization. I was supporting was a law firm and The from an outside was from a third-party perspective I was supporting law firm as a IT specialist and the IT administrator was at this law firm Was diligent in terms of tape backup the LT tapes changed every day changed every week would take the tapes home and Lock it into a safe Unfortunately, it was a magnetic safe But tapes home into and put them into a magnet safe and would lock the safe and This That and that's the thing you don't know what you don't know, right? It's completely oblivious like he got this safe at the local store and put it in this house and has it Oh, you know all my tapes are off like he was very diligent about it and Would go for it he would even test the tapes prior to putting them in to make sure the backup was there and then would put them in like a but wouldn't do another test after the fact and The tapes are going to the safe and then this law firm was in a strip mall And beside it was a restaurant and the restaurant caught fire They had a bad grease fire and it took out the entire law firm the whole strip mall was burned to the ground But the I professionals like hey, no problem I have this all in backup tape after tape after tape all the tapes were corrupted because of the magnetic safe He lost everything and it was the biggest things in his life Like it just he was that was his responsibility Aside from the upkeep infrastructure and everything went down and everything was lost That for me was an eye-opener in terms of you know, then you're looking at disaster recovery solutions You're looking at scenarios where you having off-site the law firm was exploring into that whole aspect of well Yeah, what if I was to have a separate data center off-site and the costs for that and you know for a small law firm it didn't make financial sense to have that type of configuration and So that's where the discussion of Azure backup came in at that time and we're talking a long time ago And it was you know in its infancy and a lot of concerns around you know My data has to be on-premises for my ISO certification or my standards for my my organization in my industry I can't have data in the cloud. I can't have that, you know, show my data being gone But in respect to that if the data is not active is just at rest, you know There are special considerations that can be put into play for a disaster recovery solution and Azure backup has a capability to provide that functionality so That's a great Explanation of why I mean that tapes Like goodness knows that I had a great mixtape once upon a time and you know, and then that you know actually strength, you know, yeah, like I actually I got it out and listen to it It was all crinkled and like it just it didn't sound as good as I remember, right? So That kind of nicely moves us on to You know, what is Azure backup recovery? What like what is it? Do you know what I mean? Because like you've kind of given the real world example of like what people think or what was backup, you know Like I remember as a kid You know working in a store and the manager of the store doing exactly the same thing as the person from your story They give me the give me the tape and they'd be like right now You go around to the other office and they store it in their safe I'm like this again makes no sense, but I have to do it every day But like surely there's got to be a better way of doing it We are we saying that as your backup recovery is that way? Like what is as your backup recovery? So here's the thing as your backup or backup in general is part of your disaster recovery plan as an organization You have to have a solid plan to understand when catastrophe strikes What happens to your organization? How is your data packed backed up? How is your data retrievable after that? The biggest thing that you have to remember is data is the new currency and so that's worth There's a huge amount of value in the data that you have and you have to treat it as such So in respect to your data having it backed up on a tape. Is that enough and having it at a separate location? What have you? Further to that in terms of disaster recovery. It's not enough just to test that It's not enough just to have a backup. You also have to test it You also have to ensure that the functionality that backup has in terms of your data Is usually so it's not just enough to put it somewhere and forget it The other aspect to that is from a development perspective We're seeing a lot of situations where hey developers coming in to build a solution You don't want to have these developers building a solution directly on your live data So you want to build a dev environment doing that from a tape It could take hours if not days to set up the whole environment as it's just spinning up in a dev instance based on your backup You know, there's so many different reasons why The biggest thing to remember though when you're looking at this is what is required of your organization? I can tell you to you know till I'm blue in the face how awesome as your backup is But it also has to meet your requirements and your needs for your organization has to be something where it fits We talked a little bit is before before the show You know, it's awesome to have this ability to push it out to the cloud But a lot of organizations still have an on-premises implementation of architecture because of need because of cost whatever the functionality requirement is as your backup is that capability of having off-site if It you know meets your requirements not need these tapes not needing the deal DLT back Configuration automating the whole solution Even the testing can be automated, which is huge and then I require pulling it You know, you're looking at if you have your offices completely down You can do that swap over to your backup that's in cloud and have everybody put up and running within hours You have that scenario where you're moving sites And you're moving to another site and pushing off your data to the other site your backup to the other site And then deploying your image that way. There's so many different uses just above and beyond the civil backup Implementation and it's not windows. It's also other other functionality and other services out there as well so Yeah, I kind of you like you touched on something there But like, you know, the majority of people out there have got an on-prem. So let's just put ourselves in a on-prem scenario Right. How do we use Azure backup? Like how can I get Azure backup? And I've got on-prem. So say I've got you know Windows Server 2019 on-prem infrastructure as it is at the moment How how do I go about enabling that as your backup recovery piece? Like like what we're gonna do because I want to be secure and I don't want to work on tapes anymore So inside of the Azure portal You would actually add in your on-premises servers to the Azure portal a client is then pushed down to the server itself And then your backup is scheduled accordingly when love about this It's it's fully your control in terms of Right, right. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah It's that it like you just log on to a portal you push a client down you put it on your server and then you've got it And then you've got it Sorry, I'm just I'm just taking a moment because I thought it was going to be surely more complicated than that No, that's it Eat my short what happens is that? When you've added your server when you've added your server to the Azure portal into the Azure backup service In essence provides an authentication key for the security aspect, right? And then pushes down the client to your machine Which acts as your actuator and capturing that data to be pushed out to the cloud and then having the ability to select You know full backup incremental backup. Yeah, whatever is required by your organization folder backup You know, whatever that may be if I don't need to back up your entire Architecture that's on-premises having the specific instances pushed out of the cloud totally customizable to your needs Okay, so and I think I read somewhere that is like there's volts or Like again like again, I'm probably just gonna ask you things that you you're like, that's obvious. Yeah But right there like it in in in backup and recovery there there's volts, right? So first of all, what are volts? Why they important and then is there like a limitation on what you can do, you know within within this like do you need like You know, like a special subscription or like how does that stuff work? So you're staying in Azure subscription has the ability to to utilize Azure backup There is no additional Subscriptions that are required as long as you have Azure the other aspect to that in terms of the vaults is your security For your data. There are scenarios where data is specific in terms of access and who can gain access to that If you're using our back or role-based access control You have the ability to govern over who gains access to what data and respect to your on-premises implementation or even cloud For all your data the same holds true for Azure backup in regards to setting the authentication rules for specific individuals To access that data that's in backup because that that backup data is just needs It's the same type of security as your on-premises Data for specific instances or specific uses Because of this you have the ability to accept governing rules in terms of if you're going to go and access the backup data What rights do you have you have the ability to redeploy? Do you have the really the ability to redeploy in subscription out of subscription into another subscription? You have the ability to push down to an on-premises Implementation you have the ability to fully access that data. You only have read access to specific parts of that data Do you have the ability to spin up specific accesses of that data for dev environments? Like it could be very granular in terms of the capability more so than the functionality that you would have in the backup on a DLT tape Okay, so that kind of like grouping of the the backup and resources is like a bolt So that did I just understand that right? Yes Cool just make sure I'm on the right track because like you know like I said, I'm learning This is not like we haven't pre talked about this and and I'm learning this life You know that's that's pretty is there a limitation to the number of servers machines that can be registered into a vault like where you keep all people you know You know, you know, you're you're safe data and everything. Does it matter? So there's no limitation Do you know of course there's an incurred cost in terms of the amount of data that you're backing up So make sure you're aware in terms of what you're backing up into the cloud There are actually cost analyzers that are available as well that can actually provide you some prediction In terms of what your estimated cost will be in terms of as your backup The larger charge is for the actual transfer of data more so than the storage of data So when you're doing your initial backup, obviously, you'll see a spike and respect in respect to your costs But once that's been completed and you're doing incremental backups the cost is substantially less In terms that implementation the biggest thing out of this though is that on a dime I can turn on that infrastructure that's in the cloud and it would be seamless to your end users should disaster strike And you your your organization would continue to function Without the need of you know restoring to another infrastructure. It can be a temporary scenario It doesn't have to be a you know, a hundred percent. That's it for going forward You can go back to on crisis if required But there's a piece of mind that you have a availability like having an off-site architecture and infrastructure should disaster strike its organization and None of these votes are metallic like a magnetic in any way None of this is magnetic loss Yeah, that's cool. Just make sure like What's interesting about this is it's you know, when you hear about solutions like Azure backup you immediately think okay We're talking Fortune 500 companies banks and law firms and medical, you know, I've seen deployments of Azure backup for floor shops Because that's their bread and butter in respect to their customers and their you know daily activities and the transactions that are Being captured and so this you know a couple floor shops here in Toronto actually have deployed to Azure backup instead of having an on-premises Implementation of tape because should disaster strike data is up in the cloud. They're they're safeguarded by it It's it's a minimum cost of them because it's literally it's one server inside of their The floor shop, but it's something where it's a piece of mind that they know that their data is always going to be there So it's it's really the combination of like the right hardware Right infrastructure and then that extra little layer on top of protection just to make sure that everybody's getting the right services And I suppose what I've kind of picked up from you It's about being smart and I'm kind of you know It's about being smart with what you choose to make sure that you've got there that you don't need to back up everything You just need to back up the things that are critical like your customer data or you know that kind of stuff The stuff is irreplaceable. That's the stuff you need to make sure it's safe and then it can be cost effective So you know that makes sense it how many data sources that you know It can you have in in you know in in this backup environment in a vault say like is there is there a limitation to that or you know Or is it just really how much you're willing to pay for how much data it like it's scalable right? It's elastic Yeah, it's completely elastic right there is no limitation in terms of I can only have so many data points that are Pushing up to the cloud it is you know something that you have to think about in cost And that's why it's so important to Understand what your strategy is for disaster recovery when using as your backup Do you require to back up everything or you can you just back up a couple things like customer information and transactional information? It's it's something that you you know, you can keep in mind. You can also supplement it with on-premises Backup as well. It doesn't mean that if you've gone as your backup that you've now Eliminated the need for on-premises backup You can definitely do both if that's a requirement of your organization for ISO standards or certifications that you may have to adhere to It's totally up to you the big thing though with this is The amount of time it then would take you it should a disaster strike To be up and running and it's you know, it's it's it's something where you're looking at, you know Complete disaster and a complete disaster could be you know a tripped alarm inside of your organization and the Water sprinklers go off and takes out your full server room And I you know sometimes a server room is in the closet and unfortunately is susceptible to water leaks and what have you That's a disaster and you've lost your data, right? It's not you know, it's just something to be prepared for when you're looking at your entire solution And as your backup is a part of disaster recovery. It's not the full solution Okay now that that makes sense and I just wanted to kind of go back to something you kind of talked about it earlier, but the policy piece When I think about like obviously my data is there I can set policies is that again? Is there a limitation to? You know how many policies I can create the you know the whole like Again, how does how does the policy bit work because I imagine that's really important to the Because again, I'm kind of leaning towards the security question here, right? Which is again, it's in the cloud is there But is it the it's the policies that create the security layer will help build that security layer for the business So policies is you know something a part of your organization in terms of who gains access to what who can spin up? What resources who can you know set up? You know a Deployment of your backup This is something that's to be planned emits your entire as your implementation and subscription You would have it at the top layer in terms of your access who gets access to what? Like the whole role-based access control of spinning up of resources spinning up a compute cycles That then trickles down to any resource that you've deployed You can then get granular specifically on as your backup and say who gains access to what there are different roles In terms of backup one to just do testing one to do an actual deployment You'd have to go through all the roles itself and then you can even customize your own roles In terms of your implementation and I know of a lot of it shops that you know support organizations What they'll actually do is they'll build these custom roles and export them as JSON templates And then import them into other subscriptions to give other customers a leg up in terms of having that implementation of that role already created It's completely up to the organization deploying as your backup in terms of their security requirements And in terms of the customization or use of existing templates that are better there for them to take advantage of Cool, so I kind of think of it It's kind of almost like if you were actually in a physical world and you were allowing people to access to different parts of a building It's kind of like that. That's how my my kind of simplistic brain thinks about it But that's kind of basically what the policy is allowed to do, right? So yeah, that's cool That makes sense. It's kind of it's this is sinking in now Anthony is sinking in I'm starting to get it. I'm feeling good about a backup and recovery. So My organization what we decided to do we've got like one volt and How do we isolate different data from you know different? You know different servers in the vault when I'm restoring data like how do I get it back out? Do you know what I mean in the right place when I've only got one? I've got one ball But multiple things in there. How do I how do I know what what the right thing is to go back? Well first thing you would do is assign roles to the individuals to even gain access to the backup data, right? I don't know if you want to allow that for the entire organization usually that's held specifically within the IT department in terms of that capability Once you've set up that role, then you have that individual have the ability to if you're going to Restore the data that you put into Azure backup They would then be responsible for the restore functionality after that whatever policies are in place after the restore has been completed That's succinct with your organization. So that doesn't change. Okay, individuals have access to what data that's in this Is what happens if you need to add additional roles to access your backup? So as an example, there's a developer and it's the organization They want to spin up a copy of the backup as dev A dev arm so that they can build out their applications on you know Copy data not live data to build out their solution and then punt it over to IT to have it deployed You know you can enable that type of functionality that when they restore that data They can't restore it in the live production area. They would have to create that developer platform You can even use inclusion of blueprint technology that allows that IT to control what the developers do in terms of their deployment But allowing them to be self-sufficient in creation of that deployment of that area and then push out that backup to that Blueprinted dev area for them to have that functionality, but not affect the on-premises live data So to you know ensure that nothing gets stopped in terms of production Like it sounds ideal and it sounds very very simple. So, you know, I'm just it's just great that we can tell people about it the whole thing that works on the Azure subscription piece, right and Is there a whole thing between say if I've got data on one subscription and I want to move? You know do I need to you know, I've got another six You know dial up another subscription. Can I move that data around as as the the owner of those subscriptions? Is that is that a thing that I can do? So you can but again, it's based on rights, right? So from a perspective of having the forest and multiple multiple Right it we're still we're still in that scenario of forests and then the subscriptions replace the actual on-premises Implementations, but like your on-premises implementation usually you have one service per application The same would hold true in terms of subscriptions You'd have a subscription for a specific application We should be part of a forest that can have that connection across multiple Subscriptions and having the ability to actually push out that data to the subscription that's required So long as you have access to that other subscription, right? And the rights are enabled for you to have the ability to push that back up to the other subscription Perfect And actually I really appreciate you spending the time to talk to me about it's like it is complicated and But actually you've made it very very simple and you know for somebody like me who's not you know, ultimately I you know, I'm just I'm just a sales guy So, you know, like you're you're making it so that I understand the reasons to do it and the reasons to use it Then you know your work here is done, but no, it's not done Actually, we're gonna move on to the fun part of of our call The again the producers as ever love to make me look stupid It's you know, it's it's one of their favorite things So we have this little part of the show where basically we we show some memes To me and to you and then we're gonna get the reaction now Obviously from an audience perspective if you're loving these memes and you've seen a few of the shows You've got a meme that you want us to show to to an expert Make sure you put it in the comments and make sure you you send it through to us And like we'd love we'd love to have your impact. We'd love to have your feedback So we you know, we definitely want to get those comments and all that stuff coming anyway But if I'm lucky with the power of a producer and if I say three two one show us a meme Three two one show us a meme we get a meme Okay, so we've got So server says if you don't know what's wrong, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna tell you I Don't know what's wrong. I don't know what's wrong with this meme. Does this does this mean anything to you Anthony? So it dies it tells me that you have your windows admin center is not set up properly Or you haven't incorporated as you're monitoring to understand what's going on in your impremises environment Usually, uh, that's not the case anymore. But yeah, I get the meme Right now that so like I said, uh, they are certainly there to make me look silly, right? Okay, so we're gonna do another one really quick meme number two. Here we go Boss the server is down Just restart it. Hmm. It's not that simple Um, well like this if now if there's ever a reason for back, you know for backup and recovery like this is the mean for it Right. Oh, there you go This reminds me of a story. Um, a new organization and you a new retail Uh, um organization was setting up shop, uh, and they had these servers in the back room And somebody decided to use them as a uh a table to cut wood Uh on top of the servers because it was a level Right. Now the blade didn't hit the server by that individual that was doing the construction was like immediately Reminds me of that It is amazing though that that that so the disc the disregard that the old server has in the corner of like, you know Someone's store or like, you know, someone's office or whatever. Like it's just like, you know, that just keeps on working And you know, I think Sorry, sorry Yeah, you go Oh, I'm just gonna say the amount of servers that I've seen that have houseplants on top of them Uh, with water scenes rolling down the side of the server, you know, I've seen it so many times Uh, people just don't know, right? Yeah, and I mean and that water calling technology is is not gonna you're not gonna aid you back up Uh, do you know that? Um, well, I think uh, let's just kill that meme because uh, you know, I mean, we've seen enough We've seen enough damaged and stressed servers I'm just going to recap really really quickly about kind of what we learned about today So what we've learned is is that you've got an on-premise windows server scenario You can actually take advantage with With most up-to-date version of a bit you can actually take advantage of that as your backup recovery You can add that that layer on um, I've written down here that um And these are kind of my two takeaway points, right? First of all, it's scalable to whatever size business you need be or small and it's also customizable So you can control the policies of who access is the data where you put the data where you move the data All of that is completely controllable in that as your environment. So, you know, I think You know, is there anything else that you know, you'd like to say to the audience maybe Anthony before we go that, you know Again, I've super simplified it. But you know, as your backup recovery, what's your what's your parting thought? So so I actually wanted to add to your piece because you'd said windows. It's not just windows. It's linux as well So you have the full functionality backing up your linux, which in retail is huge Especially on transactional the capture that information and then it can also get granular in terms of your data Specifically around sequel. So if you have your sequel database, there's a specific client that you can actually deploy for sequel as well And get granular to, you know, the data that's inside of that database for extraction of partial or full or what have you, right? The biggest thing to take away from all of this is sky's the limit in terms of your backup solution But don't just deploy or implement a backup solution without understanding What are the needs of your organization that you support having a disaster recovery plan that your organization has to adhere to And everybody has to agree to it's not something that it can just walk in and deploy anymore This is in partnership with the developers and the business decision makers of your organization And ensure that your solution is such that Should disaster arise and that's something as simple as a houseplant being watered to too frequently and taking out your server You have to have the ability to ensure that your business stays up and running or you may not have a job Yeah, you know, ultimately the cost of A bit going wrong is a lot more than the cost of protecting yourself So you'd be very very naive exactly like you said Anthony not to take those proportions So that everybody like thanks very much for tuning into this episode. As I said, we've had the bark man Is that shoulder even smart? We have the bark man with us today And Anthony Bartello. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your wisdom And everybody if you've got any thoughts or comments or you want to find out a bit more or you want to You know talk talk to Anthony probably when he talked to Anthony, but maybe we'll get maybe we'll see what we can do Um, but obviously he's over in Toronto on Toronto time. So thank you so much So I really really really appreciate it and hopefully you've enjoyed this episode from the rock to the cloud Or in fact sky's the limit as Anthony said and we look very much to seeing you on the next episode