In this post I describe how you can backup your Audiocodes Mediant VE on Microsoft Azure. Let’s start with some basics before configuring your SBC backup on Azure.
Save config
First of all, if you deploy your Audiocodes Session Border Controller (SBC) for Teams Direct Routing or any other SBC I’d recommend to save the configuration. For instance, on Audiocodes Mediant SBCs you can easily save the configuration file (config.ini) and/or packages.
Take a (“on-system”) snapshot
Another option is to directly save a snapshot on the Audiocodes SBC which enables you to quickly revert to this “restore point”.
Enable native Azure Backup for virtual SBC?
Hereinafter, I’ll show an example on how you could enable and configure a common virtual machine getting backed up on Azure with built-in capabilities.
Important Note
An Audiocodes Mediant VE is no common virtual machine because it is a hardened system, a Cent OS linux with a limited set of administration compared to a common virtual machine running Linux or Windows. That’s why there no Azure extensions or agents installed on an Audiocodes Mediant VE thus you cannot use the native Azure Backup to backup your Audiocodes Mediant on a regular basis. So you’ll have to backup it up manually saving the INI file or use the Audiocodes REST API for an automated approach (not described here).
Here you can configure retention, how long which type of backup should be kept.
After the validation is ok, your done.
You could trigger an ad hoc backup now, to check if it works.
If configured you should also restore the system once, to ensure that you know that it works and how to restore a VM.
Conclusion, opinion and summary
To backup your SBC configuration is essential. No matter where it is located, on-premises or online. In case of the security hardened Audiocodes Mediant (VE) I usually backup the configuration before and after each change. Furthermore, I keep old and new firmware version files to have a way back, just in case. It is a pity that we cannot use native Azure Backup features to backup an Audiocodes Mediant VE on Azure at the time of writing this. That’s definitely a feature I would like have in the future but also can understand that adding extensions to a appliance adds bloat and other aspects that need to be maintained besides the security risk that a extension could be compromised if it was not updated or else. For now I stay with the REST API and/or manual config export from an Audiocodes Mediant VE.
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