This article summarizes the supported settings, configurations, and limitations when you back up and restore Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) using Druva.

Cloud Support:

Azure Public Cloud ✅ | Azure Government Cloud ✅ | Azure China ❌

Supported Scenarios

Scenario	Backup Method	Agent Required	Restore Capabilities
Direct backup of Azure VMs	Entire VM backup via native Azure cloud APIs.	No (100% Agentless)	• Create a new Azure VM • Disk-level recovery (Restore entire disks) • Granular recovery (Restore individual files or folders)
Azure VMs with Ephemeral OS disks	File-level or application backup.	Yes (In-guest agent required)	• Restore individual files or folders

VM Compute Configuration Support

Compute Configuration	Support Status	Details / Limitations
Standard Azure VMs	Supported	Full agentless backup and restore capabilities.
Azure Dedicated Hosts	Supported	Supported for 100% agentless backup and recovery.
Azure Spot VMs	Supported with conditions	Backup is fully supported. 📝 Note During recovery, the VM must be restored as a standard Azure VM. It cannot be restored directly back as a Spot VM pricing tier.
Ephemeral OS disks	Not supported (Agentless)	Native Azure snapshots are not supported by Microsoft for temporary storage. • Alternative: Requires the installation of the Druva in-guest agent for file-level protection.

Azure Environment and Subscription Support

Feature / Scope	Support Status	Details / Limitations
Microsoft Azure Public Cloud	Supported	Full backup and recovery support.
Azure Government Cloud	Supported	Full backup and recovery support.
Azure China	Supported with conditions	• Agent Required: Requires the installation of the Druva in-guest agent inside the Azure VM. • Data Sovereignty: Backup data is securely transferred and stored in a Druva cloud location outside of China. Native agentless backup is not supported for this region.
Multiple Azure Tenants	Supported	Protect and manage multiple Azure Active Directory (Microsoft Entra ID) tenants from a single Druva console.
Multiple Azure Subscriptions	Supported	Protect Azure VMs across multiple subscriptions within your tenants.

Azure VM Deployment and Recovery Support

Feature / Scope	Support Status	Details / Limitations
Resource Groups	Supported	Restored Azure VMs can be placed back into the original or a new Resource Group.
Availability Zones	Supported	Restored Azure VMs can be pinned to specific Availability Zones during recovery.
Availability Sets	Supported	Restored Azure VMs can be added to an Availability Set during recovery.
Cross-Region Recovery	Supported	Back up an Azure VM in one region and restore it to a different Azure region.
Cross-Subscription Recovery	Supported	Restore an Azure VM to a completely different Azure subscription.
Cross-Tenant Recovery	Supported	Restore an Azure VM to a completely different Azure Active Directory (Microsoft Entra ID) tenant.

Azure VM Configuration and Storage Support

Configuration Property	Support Status	Details / Limitations
Windows Server Operating System	Supported	Full agentless backup and recovery for all Azure-supported Windows Server versions.
Linux Operating System	Supported	Full agentless backup and recovery for all Azure-supported Linux distributions.
Azure VM Disks	Supported	Supported for VMs with a single disk or multiple attached Managed Disks.
Azure Marketplace Images	Supported	VMs deployed from standard Azure Marketplace images are fully supported.
Custom Images	Supported	VMs deployed from specialized or custom user images are fully supported.
VM Tags	Supported	Metadata tags applied to the Azure VM are captured during backup and automatically reapplied upon recovery.
Network Interfaces (NICs)	Supported	Network configurations, including virtual network (VNet) and subnet mappings, are restored with the VM.
Availability Set Configuration	Supported	Association settings are captured and can be re-applied during restoration.
Managed Identity Configuration	Supported	System-assigned and user-assigned managed identities are restored alongside the VM configuration.

Azure VM Type Support

Druva protects and recovers all publicly available Azure Virtual Machine sizes, categories, and series generations.

VM Category	Support Status	Supported Series (includes all generations)
General purpose	Supported	A-series, B-series, D-series (including Dav, Dv, and Dsv types)
Compute optimized	Supported	F-series, FX-series
Memory optimized	Supported	E-series, M-series
Storage optimized	Supported	L-series
GPU & AI optimized	Supported	N-series
High performance Compute	Supported	H-series

Operating System Support

Because Druva provides 100% agentless protection via native cloud APIs, backup and recovery operations are completely independent of the operating system version running inside the VM.

Operating System Family	Support Status	Scope of Support
Windows Server	Supported	All Azure-supported Windows Server versions and editions (including Datacenter, Standard, and Azure Edition).
Linux Distributions	Supported	All Azure-supported Linux distributions (including Ubuntu, RHEL, SUSE, Oracle Linux, Debian, Rocky Linux, and AlmaLinux).

Azure VM Disk Type Support

Druva protects all standard Azure Managed Disk types. During recovery, backup and restore operations automatically preserve your original disk types and configurations.

Azure DiskType	Support Status	Available Restore Options	Details / Limitations
Premium SSD	Supported	• Entire Disk • Files & Folders	Full agentless backup and recovery.
Standard SSD	Supported	• Entire Disk • Files & Folders	Full agentless backup and recovery.
Standard SSD	Supported	• Entire Disk • Files & Folders	Full agentless backup and recovery.
Standard HDD	Supported	• Entire Disk • Files & Folders	Full agentless backup and recovery.
Premium SSD v2	Supported	• Entire Disk • Files & Folders	Full agentless backup and recovery.
Ultra Disk	Supported	• Entire Disk • Files & Folders	Full agentless backup and recovery.
Shared Disks (Clustered)	Supported	• Entire Disk • Files & Folders	Full agentless backup and recovery.
Ephemeral OS Disks	Supported with conditions	• Files & Folders only	• Agent Required: Requires the installation of the Druva in-guest agent for file-level protection. • Note: Native agentless snapshots are not supported due to temporary storage limitations in Azure.

📝 Note

For granular file and folder recovery involving encrypted disks, see the Azure VM Encryption Support Matrix.

Azure VM Backup Operational Support

Backup Feature	Support Status	Details / Limitations
Backup Scheduling & Triggers	Supported	Supports automated, policy-based scheduling as well as manual, on-demand backups.
Incremental Backup	Supported	After the initial full backup, Druva only transfers and stores new or changed data blocks.
Automated VM Discovery	Supported	Automatically detects new Azure VMs added to your subscriptions via Auto Configuration Rules.
Long-Term Retention (LTR)	Supported	Retain backup data for days, months, or years to meet strict enterprise compliance rules.
Air-Gapped Protection	Supported	Backup data is securely isolated outside of your native Azure tenant environment.
Data Lock (Immutability)	Supported	Prevents backup data from being deleted or modified prematurely, protecting against ransomware.
Safe Mode	Supported	Operational guardrail that blocks malicious or accidental deletion of backups and unauthorized retention policy changes.
Managed Data Detection & Response( MDDR)	Supported	24/7 managed data detection and response service with proactive threat monitoring and guided incident response by Druva experts.
Global Deduplication	Supported	Minimizes cloud storage consumption by deduplicating data across all protected Azure VMs.

Azure VM Recovery Options

Recovery Scenario	Support Status	Target Location Options
Restore as a New VM	Supported	• Create a brand-new Azure VM using a new name while maintaining or changing configuration properties. • Use cases: Ideal for Sandbox Recovery, creating Test/Dev environments, and recovering from a Corrupted VM without altering production.
Replace Existing VM	Supported	• Overwrite the original active Azure VM in-place. • Use cases: Rapid recovery from Accidental VM Deletion or rollbacks after a Ransomware event.
Cross-Resource Group	Supported	Restore the Azure VM to a different Resource Group than the original.
Cross-Subscription	Supported	• Restore the Azure VM to a completely different Azure Subscription. • Use cases: Streamlines Subscription Migration projects across corporate business units.
Cross-Region	Supported	• Restore the Azure VM to a different Azure Region. • Use cases: Provides full infrastructure support for Regional Disaster Recovery testing and execution.
Cross-Tenant	Supported	• Restore the Azure VM to a completely different Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) Tenant. • Use cases: Facilitates Tenant Migration workloads during corporate mergers and acquisitions.

File-level Recovery Support

Recovery Target	Support Status	Available Granularity	Details / Limitations
Azure Storage Account	Supported	• Individual Files • Entire Folders	To prevent data exfiltration and maintain strict enterprise security compliance, files and folders are securely restored directly to a target Blob Container inside your Azure Storage Account.

Support by Azure VM Encryption Types

Recovery Scenario	Platform-Managed Keys (PMK	Customer-Managed Keys (CMK)	Azure Disk Encryption (ADE)
Backup	Supported	Supported	Supported
Original Location Recovery (Same Subscription / Same Region)	Supported	Supported	Supported
Cross-Region Recovery (Same subscription)	Supported	Not Supported	Not Supported
Cross-Subscription Recovery (Same Tenant)	Supported	Not Supported	Not Supported
Cross-Tenant Recovery (Cross-Subscription)	Supported	Not Supported	Not Supported
File-Level Recovery	Supported with conditions • See limitations below.	Supported with conditions • See limitations below.	Not Supported

File-level Recovery Encryption Limitations

Windows Storage Spaces: File-level recovery is not supported for Azure VM disks configured with Windows Storage Spaces, even when using PMK or CMK encryption.
Azure Disk Encryption (ADE): File-level recovery is completely not supported for any VMs utilizing ADE.

Azure Identity and Security Support

Security integration	Support Status	Details / Scope of Support
Microsoft Entra ID Integration	Supported	Sync and authenticate platform users securely using your native corporate identity provider.
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)	Supported	• In Azure: Druva utilizes secure Azure RBAC permissions to orchestrate agentless API backups. • In Druva: Administrators can assign granular, restricted roles to backup operators.
Key Vault Integration	Supported	Securely integrates with Azure Key Vault to manage security principal credentials and authentication secrets.
Audit Logging	Supported	Tracks all backup configuration changes, administrative operations, and data access requests for compliance auditing.

Azure VM Cyber Resilience and Recovery support

Cyber Resilience Feature	Support Status	Details / Scope of Support
Data Anomaly Detection	Supported	Automatically analyzes backup patterns for your Azure VMs to flag unusual data changes or potential ransomware activity.
Threat Hunting	Supported	Allows security teams to scan historical Azure VM backup snapshots for specific indicators of compromise (IOCs) before restoring.
Threat Watch	Supported	Automated, continuous scanning of backup snapshots for malware and Indicators of Compromise (IOCs). Run agentlessly within the Druva cloud.
Recovery Intelligence	Supported	Visual file-change analytics and automated recommendations for selecting the cleanest, uncompromised restore point.
Rollback Actions	Supported	Provides a secure, clean recovery workflow to roll back corrupted or encrypted Azure VM disks to a known good state.
Cyber Recovery Insights (aka Recovery Intelligence?)	Supported	Unified dashboard reporting that tracks the security readiness, vulnerability status, and backup health of your protected Azure environment.

Backup Operations and Reporting Support

Operational Visibility	Support Status	Details / Scope of Support
Centralized Job Tracking & Alerts	Supported	Real-time tracking of active backup/restore jobs, automated failure alerting, and centralized status dashboards.
Compliance & Analytics Reporting	Supported	High-level backup history audits, SLA compliance reporting, and infrastructure capacity forecasting.
Consumption & Credit Tracking	Supported	Centralized monitoring of cloud backup storage utilization, deduplication efficiency, and credit balance usage.

Limitations and Unsupported Scenarios

For a complete breakdown of cross-boundary recovery limits (such as Cross-Region or Cross-Subscription restrictions for CMK and ADE), please reference the Support by Azure VM encryption types matrix above.

The following additional configurations are not supported for Azure VM protection:

Agentless Ephemeral Recovery: Full disk-level agentless recovery is not supported for Ephemeral OS disks.
Spot VM Target Pricing: Restoring a backup directly back into an active Azure Spot VM pricing tier is not supported (restored instances deploy as standard Azure VMs).

Supported cloud storage regions

For detailed information on the global cloud infrastructure locations supported for data residency and backup storage, see Cloud Storage Regions.

Supported Azure regions

Druva supports backup and recovery operations for Azure Virtual Machines within the following specific Microsoft Azure regions:

Americas	Europe & Middle EAst	Asia Pacific & Africa
• Central US • East US • East US 2 • North Central US • South Central US • West US • West US 2 • West US 3 • West Central US • Canada Central • Canada East • Brazil South	• France Central • Germany West Central • Italy North • North Europe • Norway East • Poland Central • Sweden Central • Switzerland North • West Europe • UK South • UK West • Qatar Central • UAE North	• Australia Central • Australia East • Australia Southeast • Central India • East Asia • Japan East • Japan West • Korea Central • Korea South • Southeast Asia • South India • West India • South Africa North