Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) is Microsoft's enterprise data lake solution built on Azure Blob Storage. Designed for high-performance analytics, it combines a hierarchical namespace (HNS) with file-level POSIX Access Control Lists (ACLs).
Druva delivers cloud-native, agentless data protection for ADLS. By storing independent, immutable backups in Druva's secure cloud infrastructure, you can safeguard your critical data lake workloads against accidental deletion, ransomware encryption, and operational corruption.
Key Capabilities
Agentless Architecture: Connect directly via Azure APIs with zero agents, virtual machines, or infrastructure to manage.
Access Tier Coverage: Protect objects across Premium, Hot, Cool, and Cold storage access tiers and restores them back to their original tier.
Flexible Recovery: Restore files, directories, or entire containers to original, alternate, or cross-tenant target locations.
Cross-Tenant Cyber Recovery: Experience a clean recovery path to an isolated Azure tenant during ransomware or total tenant compromise incidents.
Supported Azure Analytics & Workload Services
Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) serves as the primary data persistence layer for numerous Azure analytics, AI, and logging services. Druva protects the underlying data persisted in ADLS by these integrated platforms, ensuring point-in-time recovery for your analytics ecosystem.
Note
Druva protects the data, files, and objects persisted directly within ADLS by these services. Application-layer configurations, compute workspaces, and external service pipelines are not backed up.
Azure Data Factory: ADF extracts raw data from external sources and writes directly into ADLS in CSV, Parquet, JSON, or Delta formats. Druva protects the extracted data assets stored in the underlying lake.
Azure Databricks: Databricks processes raw, staged, and curated data directly in ADLS using Delta Lake as its Lakehouse storage layer. Druva backs up the Delta Lake tables and file structures stored in ADLS.
Microsoft Fabric: Microsoft Fabric uses ADLS as its OneLake foundation. Druva protects the OneLake data persisted within your ADLS storage accounts.
Power BI: Power BI stores Dataflow data directly in ADLS. Druva secures these underlying Dataflow files and directories.
Azure Synapse Analytics: Synapse runs SQL and Spark analytics directly on ADLS data. Druva backs up the persistent data sets queried and generated by Synapse workloads.
Azure Machine Learning: Azure Machine Learning builds AI models using ADLS as its primary data store. Druva secures the training sets, model artifacts, and data stores residing in ADLS.
Azure Monitor / Azure Sentinel: Monitor and Sentinel export logs and telemetry to ADLS for long-term archiving and compliance. Druva backs up these archived log files to ensure long-term retention.
Azure Event Hubs: Event Hubs streams real-time data directly into ADLS via Event Hubs Capture. Druva protects the captured event streams persisted in your storage containers.
How to identify Azure Data Lake Storage accounts in the Enterprise Workloads Management Console
To help you easily distinguish ADLS accounts from standard Azure Blob Storage accounts, the console provides dedicated visual indicators and filtering controls:
ADLS Visual Icon: Storage accounts with Hierarchical Namespace (HNS) enabled display a dedicated ADLS icon next to the storage account name across all account lists, backup sets, and restore dialogs. Hovering over the icon displays the Azure Data Lake Storage tooltip.
Console Filtering: In the Storage Accounts (Blobs) view, open the Filters pane and select the Show only Azure Data Lake Storage checkbox to instantly filter the list to display only HNS-enabled accounts.
Restore Flow Verification: During both Original Location and Alternate Location restore workflows, target storage accounts display the ADLS icon in the dropdown menus and location confirmation steps, ensuring you verify your target account type before executing a restore.
How Connection & Discovery Work
Druva authenticates to your Azure subscription via an automated Azure App Registration (Service Principal) assigned a custom Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) role. Once authorized, Druva communicates over secure Azure storage endpoints (blob.core.windows.net and dfs.core.windows.net) to automatically discover and protect HNS-enabled storage accounts.
Druva protects storage accounts accessed publicly, publicly from restricted IPs/networks, or privately via Azure Private Link.
Backup Options
When configuring a backup set, you can define the scope of data to protect within a storage account:
All Containers (Auto-Protect): Protect all existing containers and automatically include newly created containers as they are added to the storage account. It is recommended that you use this option.
Specific Containers: Explicitly select target containers to protect.This allows you to exclude non-critical datasets, optimize backup schedules, and minimize your storage footprint.
Recovery Options
Druva supports granular and full-scale recovery workflows:
Recovery Granularity: You can restore data at the following levels:
Full storage account
Full container or containers
Full directory or directories
Individual file or files
Target Options:
Original Location: Restore data to the original path in the source account.
Alternate Location: Restore to another storage account within the same or different subscription.
Cross-Region Recovery: Restore data to a target storage account in a different Azure region for disaster recovery.
Cross-Tenant Recovery: Restore data to an isolated, fresh Azure tenant for forensic or cyber-recovery operations.
Note:
Cross-Tenant Restores: Because Entra ID Object IDs (OIDs) are tenant-specific, POSIX ACLs are stripped during cross-tenant restores. Restored files inherit default root permissions in the destination filesystem.
ACL Preservation: Protect and restore directory and file Access Control Lists including user and group ownership, and permissions.
Access Tier Preservation: By default, your objects are restored to their original storage access tier (Premium, Hot, Cool, or Cold). You also have the option to automatically convert all restored items to the Hot tier during the recovery process.