title: Frequent Copy-only full database backups running on SQL Server VM in Azure
body: <p>We got a 2019 SQL Server VM in Azure with both Azure Server backups and Azure SQL Database backups configured.</p>
  <p>Azure SQL Database backups are configured as FULL backups on Sunday and DIFF backups the other 6 days but I noticed there are frequent (7 times a day) copy-only full backups running. These copy-only full backups only take 10-15 seconds but when they run, the I/O gets frozen and it's impacting the SQL performance during business hours.</p>
  <p>I understand that as part of Azure SQL Server VM backup, it will trigger a copy-only full database backup (and we got VM Backups running at 10:00 pm, so the copy-only full backup at around 10:15 pm is related to this), but not sure what process is taking the other 6 copy-only full database backups (they run every 4 hours at 1:30 AM, 5:30 AM, 9:30AM, 1:30PM, 5:30PM, 9:30PM). Any ideas on where to look for in Azure configuration?</p>
  <p>I have attached a screenshot of the backup history for one of the databases on the SQL Server. A normal FULL backup which runs on Sunday at 7:00 PM takes about 200 mins and DIFF backups which run the other 6 days at 7:00 pm take about 8-10 mins.</p>
  <p>I would like to know what could be triggering these copy-only FULL backups so we can disable them. We don't have any other database backups configured (SQL Agent jobs or 3rd party tools like NetBackup, Veaam, CommVault etc.)</p>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/24aTu.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/24aTu.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>