Use Cases
Use Case – Want to Protect Your Business-Critical Azure Application Configurations with Periodic Full Backups and Incremental Backups using Flexible Backup Retention?
Event: Your business runs over Azure assets, including Azure Virtual Machines, Microsoft Entra ID, and Azure Storage. You need a solution to ensure the availability and integrity of the data in these Azure assets.
Resolution: IBM® Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID runs periodic full backups and incremental backups to protect the Azure VMs, Microsoft Entra ID, or Azure Storage in your defined backup scopes. You can choose to run incremental backups as frequently as four times a day (Azure VM). Subject to your subscription, the backup data can be stored to your own storage or the IBM Storage Protect for Cloud default storage and you can apply a flexible backup retention setting upon each of your backup scopes. The retention period can be at least 2 weeks or by month/year.
Use Case – Want to Restore Microsoft Entra Groups with Members, Group Memberships, Licenses, Applications, Roles and Administrators, and Administrative Units?
Event: Tom, one of your IT administrators, discovers that he updated the settings for an important group in your Microsoft Entra ID but accidentally deleted the group.
Problem: Native restore functionality in Microsoft Entra ID cannot revert the changes or restore a group that was deleted more than 30 days ago. Tom cannot recall when he deleted it. He wants to get this group back and revert the changes.
Resolution: You have an IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID account and already have Microsoft Entra ID backup service enabled for the backup of this Microsoft Entra ID. You log into IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID to recover the group that Tom deleted. Tom remembers a keyword that is contained within the group name, but he cannot remember when he deleted the group. You must browse the recovery points for that Azure AD backup scope on the backup calendar that are before he remembers deleting the group or select the recovery points to compare. When viewing the backup data of a recovery point or the comparison report, you can conduct a keyword-based search for the group name to find the backup data of that group. Then, you can perform the restore for the group. The restore job can restore the group with its members, owners, group memberships, licenses, applications, roles and administrators, and the administrative units. For the supported and unsupported properties of restoring groups, refer to . Note that the object ID cannot be restored if a group with this ID has been permanently deleted.
Use Case – Want to Compare the Recovery Points to Find the Users or Groups to Restore?
Event: Tom is your IT administrator, and he found a user’s authentication method and administrative units have been changed.
Problem: Tom wants to know when the changes were made and revert the changes to an ideal recovery point.
Resolution: You have an IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID account and already have Microsoft Entra ID backup service enabled. You log into IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID to compare the recovery points of this user for the differences. For details, refer to Restore Users.
Use Case – Want to Restore Azure Blob Content?
Event: Tom discovers that some blobs were deleted from a folder in an Azure Blob container, which resulted in the corresponding topics appear not found.
Problem: Tom does not know when they were deleted, and it would be difficult to find all the missing blobs that need to be restored among hundreds of topics.
Resolution: You have an IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID account and already have Azure Storage backup service enabled for the backup of this Blob container. You log into IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID to recover the folder where the missing blobs reside. Tom remembers the last released date for this set of documents, and he wants to restore the folder to the state at that recovery point. You must find the recovery point for that backup scope near the release date on the backup calendar. Then, you can drill down to the folder in the Blob container to perform the restore. The restore job supports Merge, Overwrite, or Skip as the conflict resolution. For details, refer to Restore Blob Storage.
Use Case - Want to Export or Restore Admin Portal Settings?
Event: Tom discovers that a conditional access policy was updated with incorrect conditions.
Problem: Tom does not know how many times the policy has been updated and what the exact conditions were configured in this conditional access policy before the updates.
Resolution: You have an IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID account and already have Admin Portal Settings backup service enabled for the backup of the Microsoft Entra ID conditional access. You log into IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID to recover the conditional access policy. Tom knows the last modified time for this policy, and he needs to check the recovery point on the backup calendar before that time. You can drill down to the recovery points and select the policy to export. The conditional access policy will be exported to a JSON file. Then, you can compare the attributes in JSON with the settings on the Azure portal interface for differences. After you confirm the differences, you can either manually update the settings through the Azure portal or go back to IBM Storage Protect for Cloud Azure VMs, Storage, and Entra ID to perform a restore job. Before performing the real restore, you can choose to start a dry run first to rehearse the restore action with your defined restore settings.
For details, refer to Restore Admin Portal Settings.