Azure Managed Disks Snapshots
Azure Managed Disks Snapshots are point-in-time, read-only copies of Azure managed disks, used for backup, disaster recovery, and data migration scenarios. They capture the state of a disk at a specific moment, enabling users to restore data or create new disks from the snapshot. Snapshots are stored as page blobs in Azure Storage and can be incremental or full, with incremental snapshots saving storage costs by only storing changes.
Developers should use Azure Managed Disks Snapshots for creating reliable backups of virtual machine disks to protect against data loss or corruption, such as before major updates or deployments. They are essential for disaster recovery plans, allowing quick restoration of systems in case of failures, and for cloning environments for testing or development purposes. This is particularly useful in cloud-native applications where data consistency and availability are critical.