Hosting Regions
Azure hosting locations include:
- East US
- Central US
- West US
- Canada Central
- UK South
- Germany West Central
- North Europe
- South Africa North
- Central India
- South East Asia (Singapore)
- East Japan
- Australia East
Backup and Recovery
SQL Database uses SQL Server technology to create full backups every week, differential backups every 12 hours, and transaction log backups every 5 to 10 minutes. The backups are stored in read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) blobs, which are replicated to a paired data center to protect against any possible data center outages. The restore process automatically determines which full, differential, and transaction log backups must be used to restore the database.
The initial full backup of a newly deployed database is scheduled immediately.