Can one Recovery Services vault store backups from multiple servers?

Archie 20 Reputation points
2026-07-12T22:08:27.5066667+00:00

If I back up several servers to the same Recovery Services vault, how can I restore data from only one server? I'm not sure how Azure separates the backups.

Azure Backup
Azure Backup

An Azure backup service that provides built-in management at scale.

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VEMULA SRISAI 13,890 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
2026-07-12T22:17:16.6033333+00:00

Hello Archie,

Yes — one Recovery Services Vault is designed to back up many servers, and Azure keeps each one cleanly separated, so restoring a single server is easy.

How Azure separates them: every server you protect becomes its own "backup item" inside the vault, with its own independent set of recovery points. The data is never mixed together — when you restore, you always pick a specific item, so restoring one server has no effect on any other.

To restore just one server:

  1. Open your Recovery Services vault in the Azure portal.
  2. Go to Backup items and select the specific server you want.
  3. Choose a recovery point (date/time) and click Restore — you can restore the whole VM, its disks, individual files/folders, or a database, depending on the workload.

If these are on-premises servers backed up with the MARS (Azure Backup) Agent, there's one extra thing to know: restoring a MARS server's data requires that server's encryption passphrase. This is actually a helpful isolation control — give each server (or a group you'd want to recover together) its own unique passphrase, and you guarantee that only the right server's data can be restored (e.g., HR servers one passphrase, accounting another).

A few limits/notes for planning: a single vault supports up to 1,000 Azure VMs, 50 MARS agent servers, 50 MABS/DPM servers, and 2,000 total items. Also note backup data can't be moved between vaults later, so plan your vault layout up front.

If you let me know what kind of servers these are (Azure VMs, SQL in a VM, Azure Files, or on-prem via the MARS agent) and roughly how many, I can give you the exact restore steps for your scenario.

Reference documentation

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