How to Mirror Server Folders to Windows Azure

azure_whiteYou may have several important folders on the windows server that you want to protect online. Also as part of the cloud adoption strategy, you need the near term protection turned into a long term cloud migration. With these goals, it makes sense to mirror these important folders into a cloud storage service such as Windows Azure Storage or Amazon S3. In the near term, it fulfills the off-site backup purpose. In the long run, you can migrate your storage to these cloud storage services since your data is there over time.
This tutorial focuses on Windows Azure Storage and how to set it up so your folders are protected by Windows Azure. The steps are similar if you want to replace Windows Azure with Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloud Files.
The product that can get it done is Gladinet Cloud Backup. Gladinet Cloud Backup is packaged into two different products – the stand alone Cloud Backup or as an add-on to Gladinet Cloud Desktop. Cloud Backup is a Windows background service so it can monitor the folder and mirror the changes to Cloud Storage service. Cloud Desktop is more a Windows front-end application that help you *see* the contents in the Cloud Storage service, such as through a mapped drive.
This article shows the Gladinet Cloud Desktop with Gladinet Cloud Backup add-on. This way you get the best of both worlds, a background service monitoring the folder and do the backup; also a mapped drive to see what has been backed up to Cloud Storage service and what is available there.

Install Gladinet Cloud Desktop and Mount Windows Azure account.

You can use the Mount Virtual Directory wizard to mount Windows Azure account.
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In the next step, you can get the account credentials from windows.azure.com
The account name (endpoint) can be the short-hand Name. It can also be the full Blob URL. If you need https support, it can also be the full URL started with https such as https://hello345.blob.core.windows.net
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Setup Mirror Backup to Windows Azure Storage

To setup the mirror backup, you can open the ‘Gladinet Management Console’ and select the ‘Cloud Backup’ entry.
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After you selected ‘Cloud Backup’, you can select the ‘Backup by Folder’ option.
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Mirror Backup Wizard

The rest is pretty straight forward. The mirror backup wizard will pop-up. You will need to follow the wizard to pick a set of source folders; pick a destination folder in Windows Azure; and setup the backup schedule. That will do it.
Wizard step 1 – Source Folder
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Wizard Step 2 – Destination
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Wizard Step 3 – Schedule
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Wizard – Done
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Related Posts

Snapshot Backup to Windows Azure Storage
Map Drive and Backup to Windows Azure Storage
Leverage Azure Blob Storage for File Sync
Cloud Access Solutions for OpenStack
Amazon S3 as a Network Drive

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