Storage Location

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You can choose to use the default storage hosted by IBM® Storage Protect for Cloud to store your backup data or choose to use your own storage. Currently, you can choose from the following supported storage types for IBM-hosted default storage or for BYOS (bring your own storage).


IBM Default Storage Type	BYOS Storage Type
Microsoft Azure Blob Storage	Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
	Amazon S3 storage
	Amazon S3-Compatible storage
	SFTP
	IBM Storage Protect – S3
	IBM Cloud Object Storage
	Google Cloud Storage
	FTP
	SFTP Note: The FTP and SFTP are only supported for Microsoft Entra ID, Admin Portal Settings, and Azure AD B2C.

The supported Azure storage account kinds are Storage and StorageV2 of Standard performance type. Note that the Azure Blob storage that has enabled Data Lake Storage Gen2 capabilities (a hierarchical namespace) is not supported.

For details on how to change from IBM default storage to BYOS storage and manage your storage profiles, refer to Manage Your Storage.

If you are using your own Microsoft Azure storage and backup retention period is longer than 45 days, your backup data will be automatically stored to the Cold tier for cost savings after the January 2024 release. For existing customers, your former backup data are still stored in the cool tier. To use your Azure blob storage in the most cost-effective manner, you can store your backup data to archive tier. However, IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID currently does not support restoring the backup data from the archive tier automatically. If you want to restore the backup data from the archive tier, you must rehydrate the data first. For details on Azure storage access tiers, refer to the Microsoft article: Access tiers for blob data.

If you use your own Azure storage, IBM Storage Protect for Cloud recommends using the Azure storage account from the same region as the object you want to back up, otherwise, the backup will incur data transfer costs. Data transfer costs are also incurred if you use IBM Storage Protect for Cloud default storage and the Azure VMs or storage that is not in the same region as the IBM Storage Protect for Cloud tenant that you’ve signed up for. See the information in this Microsoft article for bandwidth pricing that may incur due to the data transferred out of Azure data centers.

If you use IBM-hosted default storage, Availability Paired Region is now available as an option to replicate your data. To use availability paired region, go to the IBM Storage Protect for Cloud and configure your IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID settings by enabling the Availability Paired Region option.

Note the following:

Once enabled, the Availability Paired Region cannot be turned off and will become available for all services.
If you use IBM Azure storage and enable the Availability Paired Region, the paired region is only available for the storage region, not for the data region.

If you enable the Availability Paired Region, it will be implemented through the Azure Geo- redundant storage functionality. For more details, refer to this Microsoft article. The specific secondary region paired to your primary region is determined by Azure; you can find this mapping in the official Azure regions list.

Note: The Availability Paired Region is not available for data region.


Data Center You Signed Up for in IBM Storage Protect for Cloud	Available Storage Region for IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID
Australia Southeast (Victoria)	Australia East (Victoria)
Germany West Central (Frankfurt)	Germany North (Frankfurt)

Before you provide your storage information to the IBM Storage Protect for Cloud interface, you must first add the IBM Storage Protect for Cloud IP addresses to your storage firewall or configure the firewall to allow IBM Storage Protect for Cloud servers running on a dedicated ARM Vnet subnet to access your storage location. For details, refer to Allow IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Agent Servers to Access Your Storage Account.

Once you save the storage location for a specific region in a backup scope, you can no longer update the storage for that region in that scope.

The snapshots for managed resources created by IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID will have the following tags: CreateBy: ACBVM_{tenantId}; JobId: {FB or IB}{Date&TimeStamp}; VMName: {VMName}. You can use these tags to filter and manage the snapshots created by IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID. To ensure resource protection, please do not manually delete the snapshots.