Welcome to your step-by-step guide to securing your Azure SQL resources — Azure SQL server on Azure VM, Azure SQL database, and Azure Managed Instance, using Druva. Whether you're just getting started or looking to fine-tune your configuration, this learning path will walk you through everything you need — from prerequisites to data protection and restore.

Each step includes brief explanations and direct links to detailed articles, helping you get up and running quickly and confidently.

Before you begin, it's helpful to understand how Druva integrates with Azure to protect your Azure SQL resources. The data protection solution is agentless and utilizes cloud-native architecture, providing end-to-end protection for Azure SQL resources to ensure the integrity of your data. For more information, see About data protection for Azure SQL.

To ensure a smooth onboarding and protection experience, make sure your Azure environment meets all necessary prerequisites — including permissions, network access, and configuration settings for Azure SQL resources.

For a complete list of requirements, refer to our detailed documentation:

Pre-requisites for Protecting Azure SQL Resources

Connect your Azure Tenant to Druva and onboard your Azure subscriptions to the Druva ecosystem. For more information, see Registering Azure SQL Subscriptions.

Note

If you've already onboarded subscriptions for other workloads, such as Azure VMs, you’ll still need to ensure proper permissions are granted for Azure SQL. For more information, see Update Azure SQL Tenant Registration.

Azure SQL Databases and Azure Managed Instances in the onboarded subscriptions are automatically discovered. For SQL Servers hosted on Azure Virtual Machines, the initial discovery must be performed manually. Once discovered, these servers and their associated resources will be automatically detected in future scans.

Once your Azure SQL resources are discovered, the next step is to establish a secure connection to the SQL servers. To perform any backup or restore operation on the Azure SQL databases, we must first authenticate the users or services connecting to them to ensure secure, authorized access to your data.

For more information, see Database discovery and authentication.

Define how often and how long your Azure SQL data should be backed up by setting up a backup policy. Then, create backup sets to apply these policies to your Azure SQL resources. For more information, see

Use the backup now option on the Console to trigger immediate protection or wait for the scheduled job.

Restore the complete database to a consistent state, either from a recovery point or to a point-in-time.

Monitor progress, success/failure statuses, and logs in the Jobs section. For more information, see Monitor Azure SQL jobs.

By following this path, you’ve:

- Prepared your environment

- Registered and onboarded your Azure tenant and subscriptions

- Discovered and protected your SQL databases

- Learned how to back up, restore, and monitor operations with confidence

Jump right into the product with a personalized, step-by-step checklist designed to guide you through onboarding and data protection.

On the Console, click Protect > Go to Azure. Next, open Messenger and click the Tasks tab.

Head over to the console and check your checklist now!