Azure Files is an Azure Storage Service that provides fully-managed serverless file shares accessible via industry-standard protocols, including Server Message Block (SMB), Network File System (NFS), and REST APIs.
Druva's Data Resiliency Cloud delivers native protection for Azure Files SMB shares. Leveraging an agentless, truly cloud-native architecture, Druva eliminates all customer-managed backup infrastructure, which removes the need for manual scaling, patching, and lifecycle management.
This unified solution delivers automated, policy-based data protection for Azure Files SMB shares, encompassing critical use cases such as on-premises file server replacement, "lift and shift" application data, and centralized storage for cloud development (e.g., diagnostics and shared application settings).
This protection provides rapid, granular recovery to any supported destination, combined with an air-gapped, immutable copy for superior cyber resilience. These capabilities strengthen cyber resilience by incorporating cross-region and cross-cloud replication as built-in protection. Furthermore, Druva’s single-copy architecture with global deduplication optimizes Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by eliminating data duplication and providing egress-free recovery without unexpected restore or egress fees.
Druva reduces operational risk by providing a unified data protection visibility and reporting experience across your Azure Files SMB shares. This provides the confidence to fully leverage Azure Files for production workloads while mitigating data corruption or data loss risks.
Key Benefits
Druva delivers the following advantages, defining true Data Resiliency for Azure Files workloads:
Maximum Cyber Resilience
Managed Data Detection and Response (MDDR): A managed service providing round-the-clock monitoring, detection, and notification for threat indicators in your Azure Files backups, adding an essential layer of active security management over static copies.
Logical Air-Gapped Cyber Resilience with Instant Rollback: Backups reside in a separate, isolated security domain (the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud), guaranteeing enhanced protection against ransomware and insider threats. This is bolstered by Safe Mode to prevent malicious administrative actions and instant rollback capabilities for rapid, large-scale recovery of impacted Azure Files shares.
Compliance-Ready Data Security: Ensure data integrity and compliance via support for immutable backups (DataLock), Customer-Managed Keys (CMK), and Microsoft-Managed Keys (MMK).
Intelligent Search for Rapid Recovery: Quickly locate and restore files or directories across all recovery points using advanced criteria (file name, file type, size, date, etc.) to meet strict Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs).
Unrestricted Recovery to Any Destination: Recover data to any alternate location, including across different Azure tenants, subscriptions, storage accounts, file shares, and regions. This capability is critical for disaster recovery (DR) and test/dev environments.
Architecture and Cost Optimization
Zero-Infrastructure, Agentless Architecture: Eliminates the complexity and hidden costs of managing backup compute, proxies, and agents within your Azure tenant. Druva leverages Azure Files APIs for optimized, direct-to-cloud backup and recovery.
Guaranteed Zero Egress Fees: Avoid unpredictable Azure egress charges for all backup and restore operations, delivering true predictability and cost savings.
Unified Management and Scale
Unified Management for All Azure Workloads: Manage, govern, and report on your entire Azure data estate (Azure Files, VMs, SQL, Block Blobs, etc.) within one consolidated Data Resiliency Cloud dashboard.
Mass Configuration and Policy Management: Configure multiple file shares simultaneously within a single workflow, accelerating deployment and simplifying setup for cloud-scale environments.
Data Protection and Recovery Scope for Azure Files
Druva provides granular, comprehensive data protection for your Azure Files SMB shares. This protection includes backup, rapid search, and restore capabilities for both files and critical metadata, ensuring data integrity and usability upon recovery.
Protected Resources and Metadata
Druva protects the following resources associated with Azure Files SMB shares:
Files and Directories: All file content within the protected share.
Directory Metadata (Attributes): Creation time, last modified time, last access time, and file permissions.
File Metadata (Attributes): Creation time, last modified time, last access time, permissions, and the following Win32 file system attributes:
Archive (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ARCHIVE)
Hidden (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_HIDDEN)
NoScrubData (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NO_SCRUB_DATA)
None (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL)
NotContentIndexed (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NOT_CONTENT_INDEXED)
Offline (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_OFFLINE)
ReadOnly (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READONLY)
System (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM)
Temporary (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_TEMPORARY)
For detailed information about which Azure Files attributes are protected and recovered by Druva, see Azure Files SMB Attribute Coverage.
Restoration Flexibility
Druva restores all protected components, including files, directories, permissions, and file attributes, when performing a full share or granular restore to a target file share.
You have flexibility in selecting the restoration destination:
• Original Share: Restore data to the original file share.
• Alternate Share: Restore data to an alternate file share that you must pre-provision in the preferred tenant, subscription, and region.
• Permissions and Attributes Restoration: Recovered file and directory permissions and attributes are applied by restoring the associated files using an overwrite operation. This ensures that the restored content maintains its original access control and file state.
For more information on performing a recovery, see Restore Azure Files.