Database Maintenance and Backups 
The database maintenance and backup strategy to implement on Windows Azure will follow the same recommendations as an on-premise deployment. The recommendations include scheduled database maintenance tasks designed to keep the database running optimally and a database backup routine that allows recovery to a previous point in time, avoiding costly re-work. The frequency of the maintenance and backup procedures is determined based on your database activity and re-work tolerance.
 
The key difference in building your maintenance and backup procedures on Windows Azure versus on-premise is where the database backups will be stored. The recommended storage location for the database backups for a Windows Azure deployment is in Windows Azure blob storage. Windows Azure blob storage provides a number of safeguards for the data. The first is locally redundant storage (LRS). LRS maintains three copies of the account data within the primary data center. The second is geo-redundant storage (GRS), which replicates the account data to a secondary data center in the same region. GRS functionality is implemented through a feature called geo-replication, which is turned on for a storage account by default, but can be turned off if you don’t want to use it. Refer to the Windows Azure Storage page for information on creating and managing storage accounts. There are two options for creating backups in Windows Azure blob storage.