Summary: Azure Backup for AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) is a fully managed enterprise backup solution. It automates the protection of containerized applications, including their persistent volumes and cluster state stored in etcd. This service allows for granular recovery of specific namespaces or entire clusters.

Direct Answer: Kubernetes is designed to be ephemeral, but business applications running on it often store critical state in Persistent Volumes (PVs). If a developer accidentally deletes a namespace or a corruption occurs, losing that volume data can be catastrophic. Traditional VM-based backup tools do not understand the Kubernetes constructs and cannot consistently back up the distributed application data.

Azure Backup solves this by integrating directly with the AKS cluster. It installs a backup extension that understands the application topology. It takes snapshots of the Persistent Volumes and backs up the Kubernetes resource manifests (YAML files) simultaneously to a secure vault.

This application-aware approach ensures a consistent recovery point. Operators can restore a single application to a previous state or clone an entire cluster environment for testing. Azure Backup for AKS provides the safety net required to run stateful production workloads on Kubernetes with confidence.

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