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Afi Platform Update - Dec 2024

This update introduces cloud-to-cloud SaaS virtual machine backup support for Microsoft Azure and brings enhancements to Afi backup for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Kubernetes backup.

Update summary

Microsoft Azure

  • Introduced virtual machine backup for Microsoft Azure

Microsoft 365 backup

  • Added support for exporting and recovering individual Planner buckets (previously, only individual tasks or entire plans were supported).
  • Improved backup and recovery stability for Entra ID and Power Platform workloads.

Google Workspace backup

  • Improved backup performance and stability for Google Chats backup.

Kubernetes backup

  • Improved backup and recovery stability.

Platform

  • Added the ability to search for emails containing attachments in Gmail and Exchange backups.
  • Introduced public API to list backup archives for a resource and schedule archive deletion.
  • Added archived attribute for archived resources in resource listing API.


Detailed update description

Microsoft Azure

The update introduces comprehensive protection for Azure virtual machines, including configuration and disk data backup to the Afi cloud, and provides the ability to recover virtual machines back to the Azure cloud with the same or custom configuration.

Backup is based on the Azure restore point technology, ensuring crash consistency for multi-disk configurations, as well as application consistency for certain Windows and Linux applications.

Afi offers a unique feature set for navigating and accessing backup data, simplifying date-to-day backup management for large and constantly evolving production infrastructures, including:

  • Detailed configuration preview for a virtual machine backup, including its disks, network interfaces, and public IP addresses;
  • Ability to download virtual machine configuration in Azure-native JSON format;
  • Volume contents browse for supported volume configurations;
  • Ability to download selected files from inside a volume locally;
  • Ability to view virtual machine configuration changes history;
  • Global search across all or a selected set of backups in a tenant that allows to easily locate a virtual machine backup by various properties (ID, name, tag, location, resource group, etc.);
  • Annotation labels highlighting virtual machine configuration changes.

To offer granular access configuration as well as backup and data management features, Afi leverages native Azure resource group hierarchy, providing convenient group-based mass-management for service operators and protected resource groups.

Platform

Afi now allows you to refine search results to include only emails with attachments by selecting the Has attachment option in the advanced search dialog for Gmail and Exchange.

API to list backup archives and schedule archive deletion

Afi now provides the capability to list backup archives (an archive represents a set of related backups, including the initial backup and subsequent incremental backup snapshots) for a resource (such as a user, site, etc.) and schedule a backup archive deletion through the Public API.

For more details, refer to our API documentation:

Info

Backup deletions scheduled through the API are performed with a 7-day delay. During this time, the deletion can be canceled via the Afi portal.