Your servers now run in Azure. Their only backups shouldn’t sit in the same tenant — Datto Backup for Microsoft Azure keeps copies of your Azure VMs and file shares outside your own tenant — hourly to a Datto-owned Azure tenant, then to the Datto Cloud, so VMs can boot even when Azure is down.
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This page covers Datto Backup for Microsoft Azure — Azure VMs and Azure Files, with recovery in Azure or the Datto Cloud. The rest:
Most product pages skip this. We start here — so you buy a capability, not a buzzword.
Cloud-workload DR keeps copies of cloud VMs somewhere a region, account or tenant failure cannot reach, and a place to run them.
What consolidation actually replaces, dimension by dimension.
| Dimension | Snapshots in the same Azure tenant | Datto Backup for Microsoft Azure |
|---|---|---|
| Where backups live | A vault in the same subscription as the VMs | A Datto-owned tenant, then the Datto Cloud every hour |
| If Azure credentials are stolen | The backups share the same blast radius | Restore points sit outside your tenant |
| If Azure itself is down | Wait, or fail over to another Azure region | Boot the VMs in the Datto Cloud |
| Proving a restore works | An occasional manual test, if anyone has time | Every VM built and booted from backup daily |
| The monthly bill | Instance fees plus storage and failover compute | One flat fee quoted through an MSP |
| What it is NOT | — | Not an India-region service, and not self-serve priced |
The cheapest test is a small pilot: protect a few VMs, let the daily boot checks run, then boot one in the Datto Cloud as if Azure were down.
Vendors love diagrams; buyers need to know what they’re actually operating. Here’s the whole platform, demystified.
A Datto agent is push-installed into each Windows VM through the Azure VM agent; Windows Server 2012 R2 to 2025 and Windows 10/11 multi-session are supported.
Backups land in-region in a Datto-owned Azure tenant, outside your own subscription, and fast restores back into Azure are served from this copy.
Every hour the backups replicate to Datto’s private cloud on immutable storage, so a second provider holds a copy you can boot from if Azure is down.
One portal runs backups, daily verification, alerts and reports; Kaseya’s April 2026 Unified Cyber Resilience Portal brings its other backup lines alongside.
An agent in each VM, a first copy in a Datto-owned Azure tenant — then an hourly second copy in the Datto Cloud, off Azure.
Datto Backup for Microsoft Azure keeps your Azure VMs recoverable from outside your tenant — and outside Azure itself.
VMs are backed up as often as every hour, which Kaseya ties to a 60-minute recovery point objective — its own figure, not a guarantee.
Restore points sit in a Datto-owned tenant, so someone holding your Azure admin credentials cannot reach them from your side.
Azure Files support went generally available in April 2026, and Kaseya’s product page now lists Blob containers as well.
Whole VMs, disks, files and folders come back into your subscription from the in-region copy held in the Datto tenant.
If Azure itself is unavailable, VMs can be spun up in the Datto Cloud from the hourly replica, with no extra charge for DR.
A recovery point can be virtualised to check it, then turned into a file restore or exported as an image back to Azure.
VMs are built and booted from existing backups every day as proof they recover; file backups are watched for anomalies.
The Datto Cloud copy sits on immutable storage with anti-deletion safeguards and ransomware detection, Kaseya says.
One flat fee covers backup, transfer, restores and DR testing; Datto lists $0 egress, $0 DR and $0 DR testing on its datasheet.
The product under its current name, and the 2021 launch explainer recorded when it was called Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure. From Kaseya’s and Datto’s official channels.
The product under its current name, in under two minutes.
The 2021 launch video, recorded under the product’s old name.
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Book a guided demo →Here’s what genuinely sets it apart — and exactly where it stops.
Native Azure Backup keeps its vault inside the same subscription as the VMs it protects. Datto writes each backup to a Datto-owned Azure tenant instead, then copies it every hour to the private Datto Cloud — so stolen Azure admin credentials, or a tenant-wide mistake, do not also reach the restore points.
Most Azure-native DR fails over to another Azure region, which does not help when the problem is Azure or your account. Datto can spin VMs up in Azure for everyday restores, or in the Datto Cloud when Azure is unavailable, and it charges nothing extra for the DR itself or for testing it.
Each protected VM is built and booted from its backup every day, so a failed restore shows up before a disaster rather than during one. Pricing is one flat fee through an MSP with $0 egress; Datto claims that works out 30% below native Azure, and 30–50% on its datasheet — vendor claims to test.
Datto publishes no price and sells through MSPs, priced in US dollars. Its region mapping lists no Indian Azure region: Southeast Asia maps to Sydney. The help pages document Windows VMs and Azure Files, not Azure SQL, Cosmos DB or AKS, and cloud backups are kept only 30 days after the subscription ends.
Inventory each Azure VM, its operating system, disk size and region, plus the file shares — that list sets scope and the quote.
Datto maps no Indian Azure region. Get in writing where copies of your VMs would sit, and check it against RBI or IRDAI duties.
Push the agent to a few VMs, let the hourly backups and daily boot checks run, and restore one VM back into Azure.
Boot the pilot VMs in the Datto Cloud as if Azure were down, then time DNS, network and user re-pointing end to end.
Extend to the remaining VMs and shares, retire overlapping native policies, and diarise the 30-day exit window.
Modelled on Gartner Peer Insights structure. *Counts and breakdowns are illustrative pending verified review collection.
“Our auditors flagged that the backup vault sat in the same tenant as production. A separate Datto tenant closed that finding.”
“The daily boot check sold it. We see each Azure VM actually start from its backup instead of trusting a green job status.”
“Native backup costs moved every month with storage and restores. A flat fee through our MSP made the budget line predictable.”
“Datto’s region list has no Indian Azure region, so where our copies would sit went to compliance before anything else.”
“We booted two servers in the Datto Cloud during the trial. The VMs came up fine; re-pointing DNS and VPN users was the real work.”
“The agent pushes through the Azure VM agent. Two servers we had migrated from on-prem lacked it and needed fixing first.”
Analyst firms bury this view behind paywalls, and G2 retired its Grid. So here’s TechBag’s synthesis of the Azure backup and disaster recovery market — tap any vendor to see why it sits where it does.
Execution strength vs product vision — the classic market map, minus the paywall.
Flat fee quoted through an MSP; Datto lists $0 egress, DR and DR testing.
The grid nobody publishes — how many places you can recover an Azure VM to vs how far the backup copies sit from the tenant an attacker would target.
Datto-owned tenant plus Datto Cloud; recover in Azure or the Datto Cloud.
Positions are TechBag’s illustrative synthesis of public review-platform data and vendor documentation — not a reproduction of any analyst graphic. Verify before relying on it.
Against Azure Backup and Site Recovery, Veeam Backup for Azure, N-able Cove, Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud and Commvault Cloud — on where copies live, recovery targets, price, testing, security and India.
| Dimension | Datto Backup for Azure | Azure Backup + Site Recovery | Veeam Backup for Azure | N-able Cove | Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud | Commvault Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Off-tenant Azure BCDR | Microsoft’s native pair | Azure-native backup | Agent-based cloud backup | Backup plus DR add-on | Enterprise SaaS backup |
| Where copies live | Datto tenant + cloud | Vault in your tenant | Your storage accounts | N-able’s own cloud | Acronis Cloud or Azure | Isolated Azure tenant |
| Workloads covered | Windows VMs and Files | Broadest native list | VMs, SQL, Cosmos, Files | Servers via agent | Machines via agent | VMs to databases |
| Backup frequency | Hourly, 60-min RPO | ASR points every 5 min | Policy-scheduled | Every 15 minutes | Schedule-based | Policy-driven plans |
| Recovery targets | Azure or Datto Cloud | Another Azure region | Azure, AWS, GCP, AHV | Azure, Hyper-V, ESXi | Acronis Cloud or Azure | Clean Azure environment |
| Pricing model | Flat fee via an MSP | Consumption | Per instance, VUL | Flat per device | Per workload via SP | Quote or Marketplace |
| Published entry price | Not published | $10/VM/mo + storage | Free for 10 instances | Not published | Not published | Not published |
| Included vs add-on | DR and tests included | Each service billed | Some features need VBR | Storage in, DRaaS apart | DR is an add-on | Modules quoted apart |
| Security depth | Off-tenant, immutable | Soft delete, MUA | Immutable repositories | Out of your Azure estate | Depends on the target | Air gap, immutable |
| DR testing | Daily boot, free tests | Test failover, paid | Restore-based tests | Standby Image ready | Monthly test failover | Cleanroom testing |
| India storage region | No Indian region | Four India regions | Any region you pick | None in India | Mumbai data centre | Central and South India |
| Support | 24/7, DR help included | Paid Azure plan | Paid; free = forums | MSP first, then N-able | Via service provider | Commvault or partner |
| Lock-in and exit | 30 days after exit | Keep data, keep paying | Data in your account | Price lock optional | Tied to the provider | Contract-bound |
| Best fit | MSP-run Azure estates | Azure-only, in-house IT | Veeam shops in Azure | MSPs with many sites | Providers selling DRaaS | Large, mixed estates |
Honest fit signals — because the fastest way to lose your trust is to pretend one product wins every scenario.
Datto Backup for Microsoft Azure is one of 27 disaster recovery products TechBag carries. The Disaster Recovery guide narrows them to a shortlist and shows the reasoning. →
Drag the sliders (Azure VMs and file shares protected; engineer-hour cost). Estimates model engineering time spent on backup policies, restore tests and reconciling variable backup bills, at an assumed 1.5 hours per protected VM or share a year, with 70% of it removed by automated daily verification and a flat fee. Both figures are assumptions. Illustrative.
Loaded cost = salary + overheads per productive hour. Illustrative only — your TechBag quote models your actual environment and modules.
Not published: Datto sells Backup for Microsoft Azure through MSPs as a flat fee — with per-VM billing as one option — and lists $0 egress, $0 DR and $0 DR testing. Datto claims 30% lower cost than native tools on its product page and 30–50% lower on its datasheet; both are vendor claims. For comparison, Microsoft lists Azure Backup at $10 a month per VM of 50–500 GB plus storage, and Site Recovery at $25 per VM a month. There is no INR price. TechBag lists your VMs and shares first, then prices it in INR with GST.
Best for MSP-run Azure estates
Best for a broader rollout
Best for pay-as-you-go in-house IT
Whatever the list prices above, TechBag negotiates a significantly better deal — with GST-compliant INR invoicing and local support. Ask us for your discounted quote.
Tell us your requirements and current tools — we’ll model it against what you spend today.
Take this into your next vendor call — including ours.
Which VMs and file shares need protecting? Datto’s help pages document Windows VMs and Azure Files; ask the MSP about anything else.
Where would each copy sit? The mapping lists no Indian Azure region, and Southeast Asia VMs map to Sydney.
Do RBI, IRDAI or sector rules require backups stored in India? If so, get the storage location confirmed in writing.
Per-VM billing caps each VM at 1 TB of managed disk. Do any of your VMs exceed that, and how would they be billed?
When VMs boot in the Datto Cloud, how do users, DNS and VPNs reach them? Rehearse it rather than assume it.
Does every VM have the Azure VM agent? The Datto agent is pushed through it, and migrated servers often lack it.
Cloud backups are kept 30 days after the subscription ends. What must be exported, and by whom, before then?
Which MSP will sell and run it, and will the invoice come in INR with GST rather than US dollars?
List your Azure VMs, file shares and regions first, or let a TechBag advisor confirm where the copies would be stored and scope a pilot through an MSP.
Stats, ratings, review counts and pricing are illustrative and sourced from public materials; verify before purchase.