Back up Azure file shares with Azure CLI

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The Azure CLI provides a command-line experience for managing Azure resources. It's a great tool for building custom automation to use Azure resources. This article details how to back up Azure file shares with Azure CLI. You can also perform these steps via Azure PowerShell or the Azure portal.

By the end of this tutorial, you'll learn how to perform the operations below with Azure CLI:

  • Create a Recovery Services vault
  • Enable backup for Azure file shares
  • Trigger an on-demand backup for file shares

Prerequisites

  • If you prefer to run CLI reference commands locally, install the Azure CLI. If you're running on Windows or macOS, consider running Azure CLI in a Docker container. For more information, see How to run the Azure CLI in a Docker container.

    • If you're using a local installation, sign in to the Azure CLI by using the az login command. To finish the authentication process, follow the steps displayed in your terminal. For other sign-in options, see Sign in with the Azure CLI.

    • When you're prompted, install the Azure CLI extension on first use. For more information about extensions, see Use extensions with the Azure CLI.

    • Run az version to find the version and dependent libraries that are installed. To upgrade to the latest version, run az upgrade.

  • This tutorial requires version 2.0.18 or later of the Azure CLI.

Create a Recovery Services vault

A Recovery Services vault is an entity that gives you a consolidated view and management capability across all backup items. When the backup job for a protected resource runs, it creates a recovery point inside the Recovery Services vault. You can then use one of these recovery points to restore data to a given point in time.

Follow these steps to create a Recovery Services vault:

  1. A vault is placed in a resource group. If you don’t have an existing resource group, create a new one with az group create . In this tutorial, we create the new resource group azurefiles in the China North region.

    az group create --name AzureFiles --location chinanorth --output table

    Location    Name
----------  ----------
chinanorth      AzureFiles

  2. Use the az backup vault create cmdlet to create the vault. Specify the same location for the vault as was used for the resource group.

    The following example creates a Recovery Services vault named azurefilesvault in the China North region.

    az backup vault create --resource-group azurefiles --name azurefilesvault --location chinanorth --output table

    Location    Name                ResourceGroup
----------  ----------------    ---------------
chinanorth      azurefilesvault     azurefiles

Enable backup for Azure file shares

This section assumes that you already have an Azure file share for which you want to configure backup. If you don't have one, create an Azure file share using the az storage share create command.

To enable backup for file shares, you need to create a protection policy that defines when a backup job runs and how long recovery points are stored. You can create a backup policy using the az backup policy create cmdlet.

The following example uses the az backup protection enable-for-azurefileshare cmdlet to enable backup for the azurefiles file share in the afsaccount storage account using the schedule 1 backup policy:

az backup protection enable-for-azurefileshare --vault-name azurefilesvault --resource-group  azurefiles --policy-name schedule1 --storage-account afsaccount --azure-file-share azurefiles  --output table

Name                                  ResourceGroup
------------------------------------  ---------------
0caa93f4-460b-4328-ac1d-8293521dd928  azurefiles

The Name attribute in the output corresponds to the name of the job that's created by the backup service for your enable backup operation. To track status of the job, use the az backup job show cmdlet.

Trigger an on-demand backup for file share

If you want to trigger an on-demand backup for your file share instead of waiting for the backup policy to run the job at the scheduled time, use the az backup protection backup-now cmdlet.

You need to define the following parameters to trigger an on-demand backup:

  • --container-name is the name of the storage account hosting the file share. To retrieve the name or friendly name of your container, use the az backup container list command.
  • --item-name is the name of the file share for which you want to trigger an on-demand backup. To retrieve the name or friendly name of your backed-up item, use the az backup item list command.
  • --retain-until specifies the date until when you want to retain the recovery point. The value should be set in UTC time format (dd-mm-yyyy).

The following example triggers an on-demand backup for the azurefiles fileshare in the afsaccount storage account with retention until 20-01-2020.

az backup protection backup-now --vault-name azurefilesvault --resource-group azurefiles --container-name "StorageContainer;Storage;AzureFiles;afsaccount" --item-name "AzureFileShare;azurefiles" --retain-until 20-01-2020 --output table

Name                                  ResourceGroup
------------------------------------  ---------------
9f026b4f-295b-4fb8-aae0-4f058124cb12  azurefiles

The Name attribute in the output corresponds to the name of the job that's created by the backup service for your “on-demand backup” operation. To track the status of a job, use the az backup job show cmdlet.

Next steps