Azure Snapshots: Simplify Management and monitoring

Cost Optimization

• Review snapshot usage regularly: Tracks the number and size of snapshots. This will help you avoid unexpected costs and avoid maintaining unnecessary snapshots.
• Monitor snapshot periods with period-based filtering. To avoid unnecessary storage costs, regularly review the age of snapshots to identify and delete snapshots that have exceeded their retention period.
• Implement retention policy: Define how long snapshots should be retained based on your organization’s data retention requirements. Delete old snapshots regularly to avoid accumulating unnecessary costs.
• Use incremental snapshots: If possible, use incremental snapshots that capture only changes since the last snapshot. This approach is more cost-effective and efficient than full snapshots.
• Snapshot cost monitoring: Regularly monitor costs associated with snapshots and optimize as needed.
• Evaluate snapshot storage options: Consider the type of storage account used for snapshots, especially when dealing with large volumes. High-performance requirements may require premium storage, while standard storage may be more cost-effective for less critical data.
• Optimizing snapshot frequency: Evaluate the snapshot frequency based on the frequency of data changes. For example, if your data does not change frequently, you may not need to take daily snapshots.
• Clean up orphaned snapshots: Optimize costs by identifying and cleaning up orphaned snapshots that are no longer associated with resources.

security

• Protect your snapshots: Use Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) to restrict access to snapshots. Ensure that only authorized users have permission to create, manage, or delete.

Performance and Efficiency

• Store snapshots in the same region. To minimize latency and reduce costs when creating or restoring a snapshot, ensure that the snapshot is stored in the same region as the original disk.
• Automate snapshot management: Automates snapshot creation, deletion, and management processes.

Data protection and recovery

• Test snapshot recovery: Test your restore process periodically to ensure that you can use snapshots to recover your data when needed.
• Take a snapshot before major changes: Always create a snapshot before performing any important updates or configurations on Virtual Machines or managed disks so you can quickly roll back if something goes wrong.
• Use Azure Backup for long-term storage: If long-term retention is required, we recommend using Azure Backup instead of retaining snapshots indefinitely. Azure Backup provides more cost-effective and robust data retention.

Governance and Management

• Apply tags for better organization: Tag your snapshots with relevant information, such as: environment (e.g. “production”, “development”); applicationor ownerImprove management and cost tracking.
• Use resource locking: Apply resource locking to prevent accidental deletion of important snapshots. This is especially useful for snapshots that serve as backups of essential data.
• Check dependencies: Before deleting a snapshot, ensure that it is not attached to any dependent resources or processes that may be interrupted if the snapshot is removed.

conclusion

The Azure Snapshots Insights workbook provides a streamlined approach to managing and optimizing your Azure snapshots, helping you stay organized and reduce unnecessary storage costs. Centralized monitoring, age-based filtering, and deletion capabilities help you maintain a more efficient cloud environment. Implementing these best practices ensures that you are always in control of your snapshots, ultimately improving your Azure resource management.

To get started, check out: GitHub repository.

If you have any questions or would like to contribute, feel free to connect via the repository or Submit Feedback!