Question

A financial services company runs a mission-critical SQL Server database on a single Azure VM (IaaS). Compliance requires an RPO of no more than 1 hour and recovery points that are transactionally consistent so the database can be restored without recovery or repair. The team wants a managed, low-operational-overhead solution and prefers not to manage separate backup infrastructure. Which approach best meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Configure Azure Backup for SQL Server in Azure VM, enabling log backups every 15 minutes with the SQL-aware backup extension

Answer

Enable standard Azure VM-level backup with the default daily snapshot schedule using the Azure Backup VM extension

Answer

Take managed disk snapshots hourly using an Automation runbook and store them in a separate storage account

Answer

Use Azure Site Recovery to replicate the VM continuously to a secondary region